TheoreticalMagic

I'm wondering if his homeworld is the planet Brandon talked about developing a long time ago, where lightning sparks up from the ground and is sort of an ambient Investiture. At the very least, the way Starling thinks of Zeetzi's homeworld - describing it as a place of cities made up of constantly moving parts - has me convinced more than ever that Canticle (the planet of Sunlit Man) was one of Invention's previous Shardworlds or a place he either created or had a big influence on, as there are very clear technological parallels IMO. And if that's true, then I picture Zeetzi's homeworld having an Invested Art that operates similar to Canticle....except where on that planet, Investiture is absorbed via sunlight and stored in batteries, on Zeetzi's homeworld maybe it's atmospheric static/electricity that's Invested and the "feathers" of Zeetzi's people are an evolutionary adaptation that has something to do with their bodies being kind of biological batteries for absorbing and storing ambient electricity and then manipulating it in various ways. I think it would be interesting if the evolutionary adaptation was specifically meant to take advantage of the INVESTED lightning/electricity on a specific Shardworld, and use it for an Invested Art....but then as a complete side-effect, it would also effectively make Zeetzi's people able to interact with or manipulate normal/unInvested electricity as well. Like a non-magical/physiological superpower that derived from making use of Invested electricity and ironically could end up being just as useful (if not more) even without Investiture present.

Well Uli Da, the Vessel of Ambition, was a Sho Del, and that species is a form of fainlife, right? So it would make sense for Splinters of Ambition to have fainlife characteristics like the one and only Vessel to ever actually hold Ambition.....

Oh I personally do not think Hoid would be a good choice for God at all, (right NOW), but I could see it thematically. Plus its worth noting that Hoid does seem to become incrementally more self-aware as the cosmere storyline has progressed, and we've seen POVs from him but yet to follow him as a main character - though its all but inevitable that he will be centered more as a main in later cosmere stories.....SO for me, speculating this far into the future goes hand in hand with my implicit assumption that Brandon's deliberately saving the lion's share of character development for Hoid til stories where he is centered as an actual protagonist. So when I (somewhat tongue in cheek) talk about seeing this kind of ending in the future, I'm coming at it from the angle that Hoid is deliberately NOT intended to be Decent God material as he is at this stage in the cosmere, but if Brandon has that fate in mind for him, there are storylines yet to come, that'll revolve around leveling Hoid up in morality and responsibility before he and the cosmere arrive at that narrative point.

I think it could be, but to clarify my personal hunch is it was manipulating Honor's perpendicularity but not because that's how the Long Trail ALWAYS works, but rather because Cusicesh's nature is to temporarily adapt itself/mold itself to the latest home of the Iriali in order to utilize the natural mechanisms/magic systems of each world to send the Iriali along to the next world. So it works differently on each world, changing in such a way as to exploit the existing infrastructure of the world to do what it needs to do, rather than just unilaterally bringing a static worldhopping mechanism to each new world. Thus even though Lumar has no perpendicularity and isn't considered a major Shardworld, it was still able to send the Iriali on along the Long Trail from there....most likely by utilizing the aethers in some way. (I do think its particularly noteworthy that each of the Long Trail stops that we know of happen to coincide with worlds which have access to one of the magic systems we know enables interstellar travel, as referenced in Isles of the Emberdark. Scadrial, Roshar and Lumar....which while not part of the system the aethers are native to, does have aethers, which we know have been used for interstellar travel). So using Honor's perpendicularity IS part of how Cusicesh sent the Iriali on to their next world, but ONLY because that was the most convenient way for Cusicesh TO access the Long Trail while on Roshar. The many comparisons between Cusicesh and the three major Bondsmith spren....while still being notably distinct from the three and not quite fitting into the same category as them....is because Cusicesh's adaptative nature molded it along the lines of how the Rosharan magic systems would achieve the end goal the Protector needed to achieve.....turning it from whatever it had been before, into a spren-like entity akin to one of the three Bondsmith spren who could open Perpendicularities and from there use the Spiritual Realm's Connection-to-Everywhere to power a massive Elsegate sending the Iriali on their way, via Shadesmar. (Which is also a key point for me....we know Elsegates can be used to just send people through the Physical Realm from one planet to another, which is what happened during the exodus from Alaswha to Roshar. BUT given that Sigzil joined up with the Iriali caravan in Shadesmar, with it noted that many spren had joined up with the caravan on its way across the Rosharan Shadesmar landscape.....it seems pretty clear that the portal the Iriali went through just transported them from Roshar's Physical Realm placement to its Shadesmar equivalent.....which is so far distinct to Rosharan Elsecalling, as we've seen Jasnah's version work).

About the end of the cosmere....given how prevalent the theme of "the best people to entrust with power are the ones who least want it" and the lengths to which Hoid has gone to avoid holding a Shard, I'm half expecting the cosmere to end with Adonalsium reforming in some way or to some degree and Hoid ends up reluctantly holding its power and being like "and I suppose that makes this the grandest joke in the history of the cosmere, but I for one, am NOT AMUSED."

I think its something along these lines. I'm reminded of the fact that in the Sunlit Man, a big deal is made about how much Investiture is needed to power huge worldhops, though of course the mechanism there is much different from the portal that opens here. But given that we also know that enough Investiture, given enough time, eventually develops its own sentience, I do suspect that there is a standing mechanism for the Iriali worldhopping along the Long Trail, and Cusicesh is the sentience it has evolved into over time and multiple worldhops. My personal suspicion is the changing faces Cusicesh is noted for is a reflection of all the people who come within its "range" and are left feeling drained after witnessing it, same as Mattel noted the Stormfather has an effect on people......because my hunch is that this is a) connected to the Iriali belief in the One and that all people are aspects/part of it, as reflected by a myriad of faces being worn by Cusicesh, and b) this is the fuel that POWERS the Long Trail. Just like sufficient Investiture has to be built up between jumps to worldhop as shown in the Sunlit Man, the Long Trail requires that every time the Protector guides the Iriali to a new land, expending massive Investiture in the process, the Iriali then have to stay in that new land long enough for their worldhopping mechanism to slowly, over time, absorb enough trace Investiture from people that bring themselves within range of it, that it can eventually activate and open the Long Trail again. With this possibly happening differently on each Long Trail "stop" as the mechanism isn't for worldhopping per se, but rather for hacking/hijacking the most convenient mechanism ON THAT SHARDWORLD, for enabling mass worldhopping. And on Roshar, that just happened to be hijacking Honor's mobile perpendicularity, thus making it behave oddly. At some point in the distant past, either on Roshar or one of the stops before it, this process had been repeated enough that the Long Trail mechanism achieved sentience as Cusicesh, and became the Iriali's active Protector rather than just a passive part of their nomadic culture and relocation process. The reflecting faces thing that Cusicesh does is I think incidental, or rather symptomatic of Cusicesh absorbing trace amounts of the Investiture present to some degree in all living things. Its not the POINT of Cusicesh, just a fringe inevitability.....my theory is that the Four Aspects of Adonalsium are Investiture, Connection, Fortune and Identity, the Spiritual Bedrock of the Cosmere, through which all existence is one and the same. Because Cusicesh's nature requires acting as a sponge for ambient Investiture in order to regularly refuel and reinitiate the Iriali worldhopping, that process makes Cusicesh also "soak up" trace amounts of Identity, Fortune and Connection from all the people it absorbs tiny bits of Investiture from.....which is where the changing faces comes in, a byproduct of it absorbing these Spiritual Traits in tiny degrees as well. The absorption I think is so minimal that it doesn't really rob anyone of their Investiture, Fortune, Connection or Identity to any meaningful degree....I imagine that how long the Iriali spend on each world is relative to how populated that world is, and thus how long it takes the Protector to soak up enough Investiture to recharge (thus more advanced Shardworlds that more easily support larger or growing populations would lead to shorter stays, with the Iriali having spent longer than usual on Roshar because of how much the Desolations set back population growth and ease of travel within range of Cusicesh, despite Roshar's large size). Likely the reason it takes so long though is because the Protector, by design (though whose is the question) isn't meant or able to absorb more Investiture/Identity/Connection/Fortune from individuals than they can afford to lose without being noticeably affected. Like whatever Cusicesh takes is more like 1/1000th of a Breath, even.

That's more than fair, but I consider that an issue with how the storyline was executed, versus a blanket "it would've been better to enable Szeth's abuse-modified behavior and beliefs than even attempt to pushback against them as long as pushback of any kind can be qualified as over-riding his ideological autonomy as well." The resolution didn't wholly work for me either, in large part because I do think its overly ambitious to try and pack a radical mental health paradigm shift storyline into a mere ten days in-universe, and the timeline was always going to strain my suspension of disbelief. I'm a big fan of the series and there's a ton of things I love, but just because I would rather certain things have happened for the sake of the story/characters than not happened at all, doesn't mean I believe they were necessarily done as well as they could've - or SHOULD'VE - been, IMO. You don't even want to get me started on my aggravation with Words of Radiance and "Dalinar being a more decent guy than most others of his caste does not remove his complicity in all the times he does not make exceptions for dark-eyed individuals who haven't personally saved his or his sons' lives" and other such trains of thought, lol. And no in-joke intended, OP in various other parts of the web is just a way of saying Opening Poster and a shorthand for the poster who started a discussion. Sorry for not making that clear, I thought it was a more common usage than it apparently is.

You mean the book that showed Szeth literally led a revolution against the other Honorblade-bearers and was in the end upheld as having been right to do so, its just that the literal voice in his head revealed itself to be one of his religious figures and had him thrown into slavery which for a time made Szeth doubt himself and his convictions to the extent that he refused to make any further choices himself because people he trusted convinced him that every choice he'd made on his own was disastrous and wrong? Yes, I read it. Again, I'm not arguing that Kaladin's approach wasn't flawed and he made no mistakes in his efforts with Szeth. I'm simply arguing that the intent to get a guy who has been used as an unthinking weapon to assassinate leaders and foment global chaos to think for himself is not inherently more immoral than just telling him what to do because this guy insists that his belief is that he is incapable of deciding things for himself so its better for everyone if you just tell him exactly what to do no matter the consequences. Yes, Kaladin messed up at times with Szeth, but as OP acknowledges, he recognizes this and course corrects at times as well, which is part of Kaladin's storyline not being Infallible Perfect Protagonist Man Rides to the Rescue. The process was not without problems, but the direction Kaladin came at things from and the source of his belief that Szeth's worldview had been subverted and exploited at his expense comes from a wholly different place from the paternalistic self-righteousness that characterized a lot of the people who were perfectly comfortable exploiting Szeth's self-doubts in order to wield him as a weapon. That is my point.

I mean, I agree with some of what you're saying here OP, but I do think some of your interpretations are not totally made in good faith. For instance, you can certainly criticize Kaladin's methodology as heavy-handed (it is, but a lot of that is due to the fact that the book's plot and timeline demanded packing years worth of therapy into a ten day roadtrip), but its not exactly an assault on Szeth's agency to try and impress "you are a person" upon a guy whose personhood has been battered to hell and back not because of a lack of intelligence or inability to understand this himself, but rather due to the fact that everyone IN Szeth's belief system had systematically gaslit him for years. Like. Countering that with "no, you don't have to listen to what the people who very much did not have your best interests at heart had to say about your personhood and morality" is not like. Actually a bad thing, y'know? LOL. I just mean Szeth's worldview (over the past six years prior to this) was not natural or organic to him, it was willfully subverted by people who abused the trust he'd put in them once upon a time. I don't think this can comparably be put on the same level as Dalinar or Navani who I do agree DID at times bulldoze past the Stormfather and Sibling's own preferences and beliefs out of a bullheaded conviction in their own righteousness....which in their cases, stems at least in part from their history as high-ranking nobility within a literal in-world oppressor caste. Which is.....completely at the opposite end of the spectrum from Kaladin, a longtime victim of an oppressor caste and slavery system trying to reach out to somebody he - with validity - sees himself, his own past and his own struggles to regain his personhood reflected in. A former slave helping another former slave to recognize "hey, how screwed up is it that people owned us and told us they were right to because they said God told them it was okay" is orders of magnitude different from a king and queen used to upending society on the basis of "God told me I had the inherent right to do what I want because My Eye Color Is Popping" like.....having the confidence of self required to listen to the objections of the last remaining pieces of that God and then go "yeah I'm not gonna do your plan, we're gonna do my plan instead." Characters paternalistically imposing their belief systems over other characters they regard as less sophisticated or informed is regrettably a thing that pops up in various cosmere works IMO, but in this particular instance that is not actually the issue at hand. Szeth's entire storyline is about him REGAINING his belief system/personal morality and finding renewed strength and conviction in what he ALREADY organically believed in the past, based on his own interpretation of the world and his culture.....after having those things deliberately misrepresented, twisted and used against him by bad actors who happened to be literal religious figures in his culture after they went and got high on Odium-juice. And like....Nale and Ishar's previous thought patterns were quite literally magically corrupted by said Odium-juice. You can't honestly equate trying to dissuade them from listening to magically-induced intrusive thoughts with telling them not to listen to their own NATURAL minds and beliefs. Their minds and beliefs were not wholly theirs anymore and hadn't been for centuries, and this wasn't even a neurodivergency issue so much as Ishar accidentally downloading magical cosmere malware and infecting the group chat.

Yup, I think this is exactly what happened. I agree, that similarity in descriptions for Bo-Ado-Mishram and the Nightwatcher that you found seems way too deliberate for her not to be the Night.

Yeah I'm not convinced that the Roshar and Scadrial of the space age (that we've seen thus far) retain much of the cultural identity that shapes the current hero casts of each planet. The seemingly dominant forces of each planet being callous conquerors and predatory hyper-capitalists doesn't IMO mean that the heroes of "modern" Roshar and Scadrial that might have opposed such predilections end up dying or defeated.....not when worldhopping is a thing. I do think Retribution (or an even worse Shard Intent or combination that somehow replaces it) will still be the driving force behind Roshar by the time of Isles of the Emberdark, but that doesn't necessarily mean that Taravangian is still in the driver's seat by then, nor does it mean that anti-Retribution forces like the Azirish, Venli's Listeners, the Urithiru Radiants and the Unoathed are subsumed into Retribution's war or defeated by them. I could definitely see the Heralds (more of them replaced by other modern-age Rosharans, even, like Shallan, Renarin or Adolin), still being an immortal vanguard of the opposition to Roshar centuries from now, after having helped lead Retribution's enemies from Roshar back to Ashyn or somewhere else. This is only a little bit because I want to see a Kaladin and Sigzil reunion centuries in the future. Okay fine, its like 90% because I want that. (Also, I do really hope that Kaladin, Adolin and Shallan finally get to have that drink at the end of "all this" like they promised each other before they parted ways, but I could definitely see that being fulfilled via a Brandon twist that places that drink together once all of this is over....on a distant planet centuries from now. He's like "still counts!" But I mean, if it meant I get to keep some faves around longterm throughout the greater cosmere conflict, that's worth not getting them having that moment by the end of Stormlight Book 10, specifically. Personally, I'm here for the cosmere longhaul rather than just Stormlight - though I get that's not true for everyone and I respect that - so for me, I'd rather have more faves sticking around longterm than shorter/finite narratives for them that definitively end in the next five books. But that's just where I land).

Now that I think about it, with the speculation that Syl will replace the Stormfather as the Storm Queen upon the Return, and with us having seen her grow up and mature much like humans do for all that she's a spren, its actually suddenly very easy for me to picture a young Bo-Ado-Mishram as being to Ado what Syl was to Honor (especially now that we know Tanavast for all intents and purposes basically IS the Stormfather, who in turn has always regarded Syl as his Ancient Daughter), and The Girl Who Looked Up being a much younger version of that ancient spren kind of parallels Syl's youthfulness when she first returned to the Physical Realm in the modern era.

I think Battar is going to surprise a lot of people. And I don't think its accurate to say a lot of them got mental illnesses and Battar got greed, I think its more that Ishar's Connection to the others and to Odium's power enhanced each Herald's primary vices to the nth degree, which compounded by their trauma made a lot of them PRESENT as mental illnesses. Or more accurately, made a lot of their magically magnified vices present as PART of their mental illnesses, or a symptom of their poor mental health. Mental health is of course a huge theme of the series, and I don't think Brandon spent all that time on Kaladin's mental health and recovery journey just to switch gears to the Heralds and be like now let's focus on a bunch of characters whose mental health issues are Because Magic Did It. And saying that some of the Heralds' mental health issues were due to the corrupted Oathpact risks Brandon presenting the idea that reforging the Oathpact can or should "cure" some of their mental health issues, which again, doesn't really track with Kaladin's character arc. Nor is it something I think Brandon would want to stray too close to saying. So I think the mental health issues and instability derived from the Heralds' millennia of trauma and torture is ONE issue and the Heralds' vices magnified to inhuman extremes by the Odium-corrupted Oathpact connection is a SECOND issue and I think those two issues fed into each other in a self-perpetuating and continuously reinforced cycle that left us with the Heralds as we know them in the modern day.....but the end perception we have of them isn't predicated on just the corruption or their mental health, but rather a kind of resonance created by the juxtaposition of the two in each Herald. Not unlike how Radiants have a magical resonance born of the bond with their spren juxtaposing two Surges in each of their spiritwebs, something along those lines. But IMO this means that with the expulsion of the corruption born of Odium's power, the Heralds are indeed not "healed" by any means....but the magnified vices are no longer a factor in their mental health struggles, and the resonance is gone. They're not all fully altered from how they were while the Oathpact was corrupted because that resonance built from things that already existed naturally within them, further amplified by the compounding factor of their trauma and poor mental health....but the magnification of their vices I believe has been decisively cut off at the source, has been magically dealt with just as it was a magically derived issue in the first place. Their base vices are still within them, and those vices can and I believe are magnified non-magically by their mental health struggles, but they now have the capacity to NOT be defined by those vices any more than anyone who struggles with their mental health is prone to being defined by their worst traits. So Battar might indeed still sell them out because of greed-based characteristics that were within her all along, but I think its far from a given. The Battar we met so far had no more ability to on her own withstand the magnification of her worst trait than any of the other Heralds. She's got trauma to deal with, and if she doesn't, it very well could continue to fuel her less noble characteristics in being defining traits that motivate her to sell the others out or make deals of her own with Retribution.....but by the same token, she now has the same potential as any of the others to take advantage of this opportunity before the next Return to address her mental health, begin recovering, and Return anew as more like the Herald she once was than the greedy sell-out the Corrupted Oathpact turned her into. I do think we might get one more big betrayal in the second half, with it likely to be one of the Heralds, but I think it'd be a mistake to assume it will be Battar based solely on the fact that her no-longer-magically-magnified vice is greed or susceptibility to bribery. Its a whole new game for the Heralds now that the Oathpact has been reforged, Odium's power expunged, and they have Kaladin with them to provide new resources and tools for dealing with their mental health and trauma in a space safe from further traumatization. Any of them could benefit hugely from all of this, and any of them could end up still vulnerable to Retribution post-Return because they for whatever reason didn't make the most of these opportunities or wound up not as far along in their recovery journey as the others by the time of the next Return. I don't think we have nearly enough of a look at the Heralds in general to even begin speculating who's most likely to be least trustworthy of the Heralds going forward.

I remember aaaaages ago when I read the original Liar of Partinel intro chapters, there was a reference to "the corpses of dead gods" being strewn across Yolen, and the source of some of the fainlife, I believe? But I never read Dragonsteel Prime so I don't know if those are the immortals or gods Phendorana is referencing or if these dead gods from Liar of Partinel were something else. And of course, I have no idea where they stack comparative to Adonalsium, let alone if any of that is even still canon or in the plans. But then, personally, I've always had the hunch that Adonalsium was the creator of the cosmere galaxy but not the original or only god of the universe. In fact, it wouldn't shock me (thematically) if it turned out the Shards were just the latest in a cycle of godhood, replacing Adonalsium the way Adonalsium possibly replaced older gods or was the last of a previous generation of gods, or just the one local to this galaxy, etc.....and then the cosmere cycle will ultimately end with either Adonalsium being reformed - or more likely IMO, with the rise of the next generation of gods, which might be four "Super Shards" comprising four of the original sixteen Shards each. There's a WoB that a combination of four Shards would be much more stable than either Harmony or Retribution, so I'm kinda expecting the cosmere finale to split the difference between Adonalsium and the Sixteen.....make the case that the original Vessels weren't necessarily wrong to think that too much power concentrated in the hands of one single unchecked being wasn't ideal, but at the same time, the solution was never the sixteen Shards because that made the pieces of Ado's power too contextually limited and lacking the proper framing needed to keep the Sixteen Intents from becoming obsessions bereft of nuance. So I think by the end of it all, we'll have four Gods instead of one or sixteen, and Harmony is the basis of one but will be combined with two more Shards (possibly Autonomy for one) and Retribution is the basis of another, possibly fated to combine with Reason and Valor, at a guess. And then whatever the Dor is becoming might combine the vestiges of Dominion and Devotion with two more Shards somewhere down the line, and the four remaining Shards (or reassigned Investiture of Splintered Shards like Ambition and Virtuosity) will make up the fourth God. And thus the cosmere cycle will ultimately be something more akin to the cycle of mythologies like Greek mythology for instance....with its primordial powers which gave way to the Titans who were overthrown by the Olympians, who feared being supplanted by the Giants or other children of the gods or Titans, etc. Adonalsium, his potential peers or predecessors, the Shards, their eventual final combined forms or successors, etc....they're all gods in their own ways, but they represent different generations of godhood, each being different KINDS of gods for a different era of the cosmere's arc of history.

Yeah I'm also almost positive that Bo-Ado-Mishram is the original Night spren. Too much emphasis has been placed on her being substantially different from the other Unmade to a degree that IMO really only fits if she's on the level of a Bondsmith spren OR greater....and Night seems to be the only "missing" spren that fits that. Plus the fact that she's so Connected to Roshar and the Singers to such a degree as imprisoning her had the consequences it did....at this point I'd be very shocked if she's NOT the Night. Plus, I think the Ado in her name is due to her being one of Adonalsium's own personal creations, like the Wind and Stone, and also Mishram IMO could be connected to Mishim, the name of one of Roshar's moons, which would fit the idea that the three remaining moons correlate to one of the three ancient spren. Certain lines about Night and the sky also made me think of a connection there. And all the other Unmade have names derived from Earth mythologies, with Bo-Ado-Mishram being the only one that's not an obvious reference, but there most likely is SOME significance to her name, which makes me think in her case its more of a direct in-world connection.