Underwater_Worldhopper

I wonder if Esmium-Bendalloy and Esmium-Cadmium can help here through Pushing/Pulling on time. That about what I expected, given that it would have shot out of the Cosmere by now otherwise. More questions: Can the Sho Del communicate with Progression in any way, perhaps petition her?They open Perpendicularities annually somehow, maybe they also annually convene with her? For that matter, how do the Esmians measure and delineate time? Does the planet have a moon? Does each community of Sho Del open a separate Perpendicularity, or is only a single one opened? Why/Why not? Who decides which community opens the Perpendicularity if only one is allowed? If multiple open, do they open at the same time or is the time unique to each community? How can they synchronize the opening if they open it at the same time? Can Sho Del communicate to other Sho Del in different communities? How/Why not? Is it naturally Unkeyed? Can it subsist off of pure Investiture, if it's available? That makes sense. I'd love to read your short story, if you'll allow it ^v^ Could be. There won't always be clever or direct parallels you can make to other Invested Arts, which is something I learned while making the Invention system. You see it in Hemalurgy as opposed to Feruchemy, and Feruchemy as opposed to Allomancy, and the Metallic Arts in general as opposed to Fabrials. Tin, for example, works almost entirely opposite in Fabrials as it does in Allomancy. Sometimes you just need to make something up that makes sense in the context of your magic system and the metal. Well, you have access to an entire other language, you could maybe use a related word in polish and then transliterate it into english to come up with a cool, fantastical sounding (at least to english audiences) name. Other than Destruction, I think you did a good job attaching names to those Shards. I like it. Perhaps not the most original name for the world, but I love the concept of a Shadow of Adonalsium analogous to the Stormfather. Cool ideas, though I don't get what you mean by Children's revolution. Try not to double post please <3

We don't know. Humans had Surgebinding on Ashyn in some way or form, but we don't know how or why. All we know is that Odium convinced the Ashynites to experiment with their Surgebinding, with Ishar being the first, and that led to the destruction of Ashyn. Odum giving them Surgebinding is a valid theory, but there's literally no evidence to support it, so who knows? The way it's worded, it could also be that the Ashynite magic system wasn't even Surgebinding as we know it, but something else that could just also manipulate the ten specific Surges. It would be considered Adhesion by Rosharans, but they consider all Invested Arts Surgebinding, so it doesn't count. Adhesion is just one way of accessing Connection. All manipulations of Connection will be similar in result because they're all doing the same thing, just through different means. @bmcclure7 please try to avoid double-posting, it's against site rules.

Odium never gave Ishar any abilities. He convinced Ishar to experiment with Surgebinding which he already possessed, so far as we can tell. These aren't Adhesion, they're manipulations of Connection. All applications of Adhesion (at least Spiritual Adhesion) are dealing with Connections, but not all dealings with Connection are Adhesion. If it was, then Duralumin Feruchemy would also be Adhesion, which it clearly isn't.

Cool names, I like the concept! RoW spoilers are allowed in this forum. I don't think Odium would have any problem creating Spren that can form bonds that mimic or straight-up recreate the Nahel Bond, any Cognitive Entity can theoretically bond with a person, and bonds manifest extra powers on Roshar. Bonds are Connections, which form all the time between everyone and everything. Adhesion is just the Surge that manipulates Connection, which indeed Odium could not recreate. The problem would be that the True Spren equivalents Odium would create might not necessarily count as True Spren and thus might not grant Surgebinding at all, but instead some other powers. And even if they do grant Surgebinding, it would be regular old Surgebinding and not Voidbinding, which requires both Odium and H&C to work in tandem, such as with Corrupted True Spren. What @bmcclure7 is suggesting is possible, if the Voidbinders defect to Odium's side and create an organisation that is a Knight Radiant analogue.

It's probably up-to-date minus the most recent 3 or 4 Orders. You should be okay to pick any that haven't been made yet and go for it

Just something I'd like to point out and theorize about Vivennas Blade. Color serves some purpose in the Awakening, though it's unclear what it is. It doesn't power it for certain, as that's what the Breaths are for. I've toyed with the idea that Color is what enables the Breaths to puppeteer the object they've been put in to follow a Command, as while it's never required for transferring Commands, it's needed for Awakening. If this is the case, then maybe instead of needing a constant influx of Investiture like Nightblood, Vivenna's Blade can absorb more Color to maintain the Breaths it was originally Awakened with, with no need for more Investiture.

This was so cool. I'm so incredibly late to come here and compliment it, but I've just been having a nightmare of a time irl, so I haven't had the motivation to do so until recently. Firstly, the entire ecosystem is just such a cool concept. Life that exists in specific bubbles surrounding a specific tree, which is the center for everything? Fain animals? A giant magical Moth? An in-world explanation for why Hoid can use Fortune? So awesome! The entire concept of a truly gargantuan tree with a beating heart that pumps Investiture around like blood is so delightfully creepy, and then you built such a cool and complex magical ecosystem around it! The concepts were so cool for what 6 limbed creatures would realistically look like, and I think you nailed each and every single one. I didn't miss the naming convention either, I'm particularly impressed by it. And all of this is secondary to the magic system that you made, which works so neatly that I can't wait to begin theorizing what else you could make with it. It seems like the perfect system to use to create habitable spaceships if they could get around the speed of light issue. Some questions: Does Progression influence where Esma is headed in the Cosmere? Could off-worlders use An-Neruna to fuel other magics, like purified Dor? Could a Neruna-Kai travel through a Perpendicularity and root itself in Shadesmar, or travel to a different planet? If it can't, if it were somehow transported off-world anyway, could it live on a planet it's not native to? Does the magic system produce a different effect if you use the regular base metal instead of an Esmium alloy? What effect does Esmium create on its own? What effects do the other Esmium alloys create? What does A-/F-/H-Esmium do? Is there a name for the magic system? Is there a specific term for Fabrials created from this magic system?

Not sure about the Perpendicularity bit, but in a way, yes he was stabbing Odium itself. It just so happens that all of Odium that was concentrated there at the time that was being stabbed happened to be the Vessel, Rayse, which was so Inevsted that all of what Nightblood sucked up was just him. Technically some of Odium's Investiture went with him, but that's a fraction of a fraction of a fractional amount of how much the Shard has, so it doesn't make a difference to the Shard.

I believe RoW mentions that a clan of Horneaters live in Shadesmar permanently, presumably around the Perpendicularity. This could be them, plus any other Horneaters who entered Shadesmar besides them (or their descendants), who left the Rosharan Subastral altogether after whatever happens in KoWT happens.

I've just realised that Atium is extremely rare and I'd never get my hands on it. Serves me right for not reading everything properly first. In light of the resource scarcity, I'd pick Life Sense/Perfect Pitch/Color Recognition.

True, but my point is that Nalthis as of Warbreaker isn't very knowledgeable about the more impressive end of Awakening. The higher Heightenings make Breath recognition, Greater Awakening, Audible Awakening, Color distortion, Perfect Invocation, and Mental Commands possible, but the only people who ever get access to them are the God Kings and particularly stubborn Returned like the Five Scholars. Regular Awakeners wouldn't even know those are possible, let alone practice enough to achieve them, and the few who have enough luck, skill, or money to gather enough Breaths to achieve the higher Heightenings won't be likely to share the knowledge. Normally I'd agree with you in that the text doesn't say it's possible, but the text is often, and purposefully, misleading. Given the context of the lack of understanding of Awakening and the fact that one of the abilities supposedly locked to the higher Heightenings has been performed by regular Awakeners who would know that it is possible and are able to practice it makes it seem reasonable to me that the others could be performed by regular Awakeners, should they know how and practice it. It's either that or this one random Heightening's reward can be performed without it being necessary. The same goes for the first five Heightenings, which are all scaling and only reach their maximum at their respective Heightening. We know the first five are scaling, and that the 8th is scaling, so why would a small few be different for no reason? Coppermind: Command Breaking is extremely taxing for Lightsong's priests to do, who would be around the same Heightening if not on a higher Heightening than Vasher, and Mental/Audible Commands take at least twice as many Breaths as Command Breaking to perform, so it's possible it just takes too much concentration and time to manage than he'd have in a fight, and leave him far too drained afterward. Plus, Vasher doesn't really need to do those things. If we take the most he can do at his current Heightening to be the 8th Heightening, the only Heightening benefits he'd get would be Invested Breath Recognition, Instinctive Awakening, and Command Breaking. Invested Breath Recognition I could see not being one of the scaling powers, Instinctive Awakening we know for a fact is scaling and something that is a passive effect and you couldn't force anyway, and he doesn't need to perform Command Breaking at any point. The Medallions count as Fabrials, and they have enough of an Identity of their own to function while a person is asleep, as well as wanting to draw an attribute from someone. SP3: I agree, though I suppose the damage is already done with that first post.

What's the difference between SotD in Arcanum Unbounded and SotD Shadows Beneath?

We can't know that for sure. Awakening is once of the least well-understood Invested Arts, much of what people belive about it is wrong, and what they do discover that other people don't know, such as Commands, they keep to themselves. The light distortion I will admit probably requires the 10th Heightening, but it's not something you're doing so much as it is a passive effect outside of your control, like all the color auras, so you couldn't force it to happen if you don't have enough Inevstiture. You could argue that the progressive deepening of colors around an Awakener is the light distortion, getting stringer with each Breath, so it is a scaling effect. The detecting of Investiture and Awakening with only your voice, those could be scaling too. There's nothing stopping you from not being able to do it unlike the color distortion where the effect is a direct result of a lack of Investiture, and we know that other Awakening-ability related Heightening effects scale, so we can assume that it is possible, just hard. That's fair. I do not mean Constructs as in Lifeless. Lifeless are the same thing as Awakened Objects, they're just very lifelike which makes the Breath in them able to do more than it could in a less lifelike vessel. It is admittedly a term I made up myself, but I thought it's meaning would be self-explanatory. When I say Awakened Construct, I mean a machine with an Awakened component, like Fort's tablet, and possibly the lock guarding the Dor in TLM. I'm actually quite happy that I figured that one out before the WoB was issued, I'd assumed that was the case and only recently (literally yesterday) saw the WoB. But I think you're narrowing it down too far. Anything that ends up with an Awakened Object or Construct is considered Awakening. The method doesn't have to be Investing something and giving it a Command, with the Investiture not specifically being Breaths; that's still Nalthian Awakening, just with a different source of Investiture. Using Dor to fuel Allomancy is still considered Allomancy, so Awakening something following the Nalthian procedure, even if it's not Breaths you're using, will still be considered Nalthian Awakening.

Ah, I'm just stupid. For some reason, I thought that the 9th Awakening is achieved with a thousand Breaths, which is the minimum to Awaken any sort of mineral (which, consciously thinking about it, makes no sense at all). I've just now realized that even if you have a thousand Breaths you still need the 9th Heightening. That's just me being dumb, my bad. I will say though, you need the 8th Heightening to perform Command Breaking, yet Lightsong's Priests can perform it, so the Heightening probably isn't necessary, it just makes it easier. The effects of the Heightenings build with each Breath after all, they just peak at their specific Heightenings (or become powerful enough to be achieved with no more difficulty than the regular more difficult parts of Awakening). So I'm going to say it's not impossible to Awaken minerals without the 9th. It's also worth noting that Giftlight (or a Corrupted approximation of it) could also grant Heightenings, depending on how it acts, though the same can't be said for Pure Dor or other Unkeyed Investiture. SP3 Spoilers: Ah, I missed it. Awakened Object I can see the reasoning for, but for an Awakened Construct I think Fabrial would count.

I'm sorry you didn't like the forums, you might like the Discord server instead, which is way more laidback. Keep in mind most of the people in these forums are older, intellectual kinds of people, so something more pop culture might fly over their heads, but I feel like it's a moot point by now. plus with the kind of debates and finagling we do here, it's really suited mostly to a specific type of people. I wish it wasn't, but it is. At least the theory forums, the fun-focused and general forums are far better in terms of attitude. Best of luck!

Almost, and yet, It's simply so fun to throw these at my Polish friend who knows exactly nothing about Brandon Sanderson and the Cosmere and see him struggle to even begin to understand what they mean or why I'm asking him to translate them for me. One of my cousins is also Polish, and his confused screaming trying to figure out what on earth "Stormy Bright" is supposed to be is endlessly amusing to me. Besides that, it's actually quite interesting to go through the words. Linguistics is another area of interest of mine, and what's weird is that while there are very few English, French, or other western European language cognates that I can find, there are actually one or two near-cognates from south Asian languages that, although distant, can be etymologically traced back to one another. It's something I noticed when I started branching away from European languages and focused on learning less widely-learned languages, such as south asian ones like Urdu or Hindi. Why is the word for teeth the same in both Urdu, which is spoken in Pakistan, and French? A Proto-Indo-European language, filtering through into everyday words this far into the future? Words with similar roots and semantic ties in Hindi and Polish? It's incredibly interesting what you can learn from just reading the words of a different language, even if you have no idea what they mean or how to say them. Some languages, like Dutch, are very easy to understand even without knowing the language, so long as you speak English.

That's interesting, weird that it's never been noticed before. What do you think it could mean? Voidbinding was barely (if ever) explored before the True Desolation, so I think it's a stretch to say Kharbranth has a connection to Voidbinding Dustbringers (Dustbinders?) of the past. Could it maybe be foreshadowing? It is weird that the Voidbinding Truthwatchers (Voidwatchers?) and Voidbinding Bondsmiths (Voidsmiths? Bondvoiders?) don't have Surges, but I don't know what that could mean, since we know Renarin has access to Surges. That said, we nearly could have gotten a Voidbringer Bondsmith, if the Sibling getting Unmade counts as Corrupting them. Also, Division and Transportation probably do have connections to the other Surges, they're just behind the golden lines connecting the Voidbinding Orders. It's the same for the three Surges on the other side too, and you can see that the yellow connections between orders are on top of the purple connections between surges elsewhere on the chart. That one isn't supposed to mean anything, I'm sure. Do we know where that picture of Kharbranth comes from?

The one complaint I have about the 17th Shard is that people start butting heads way too often when they have conflicting perspectives. The fact that it's a written medium means tone isn't conveyed, so someone can take something as being in bad faith even if it wasn't intended as such. Plus with the pseudo-scholarly nature of what we're discussing, it encourages more formal/technical language and longer, detailed responses, which can be seen as condescending or spiteful, again because of the lack of tone or expression to make your intention clear. That's probably going to get you a less polite response, which is going to make you in turn be less polite than you would have been otherwise, and it devolves from there. It doesn't make a good impression on new Sharders, and it's distasteful in general. They seem reasonable, if a little defensive, so as long as there's a way to go back to constructive conversation and move past the little disagreement, I'll take it. Did they mean the Shallan thing as a barb? Probably. But is it an opportunity to redirect the conversation in a positive direction? Absolutely, so I'll take it.

You aren't wrong, I'm rereading the Stormlight Archive and it was definitely mentioned somewhere that some Fabrials have holes drilled in them. I found it, it's the RoW Chapter 7 Epigraph: We just don't see any sketches of any, or can't tell from the way the Fabrials are drawn. As for the Archive gems, they aren't inefficient because of the holes: Despite Jasnah noting the holes, Navani credits the leaking of the Stormlight to the cut specifically. Edit: Does the Breath cost for Awakening a material change if the material isn't entirely metal? Like a cloth with a few thin wires of metal woven into it? That might circumvent the 9th Heightening requirement. They also could have found a way to use other sources of Investiture to Awaken, such as purified Dor, or a way to Corrupt Stormlight to Endowment's Intent, again circumventing the requirement for the 9th Heightening, or Breaths at all. Alternatively, (SP3 Spoilers) Speaking of circuits and whatnot, I assume you're talking about Fort's Tablet, but you didn't call it by name, so I'm not certain. Would all Awakened Objects, or at least Awakened Constructs, be considered Fabrials?

Doesn't Abrasion get rid of that though? How long would a theoretically Duralumin-Flared Lashing last? F-Duralumin would be extremely useful for Lightweavers, they require a measure of Connection to create Lightweavings. F-Chromium could also probably help with Soulcasting. Only Truthwatchers who've bonded Corrupted Mistspren are able to see the future, not ordinary ones. The Corrupted version is almost definitely Voidbinding and not Surgebinding to see the future. For that variant, A-Electrum could maybe help by letting them glimpse into the Spiritual Realm, and F-Chromium would also help with that, so I'd say that for them F-Chromium is better than F-Copper. But for the regular variant, F-Copper fits well, and for Allomancy maybe Gold because they seem like introspective types, or perhaps Bendalloy to help them study and research more efficiently. For Dustbringers, maybe A-Duralumin and F-Brass? Using Duralumin to hyper-Flare Brassminds, if it's possible, could create some catastrophic effects, which would be fitting for Dustbringers.

That's fair, but the Shallan plot holes?

The WoB is saying you can theoretically kill a spren with a Shardblade, but that's not necessarily what Kaladin and Syl did. It's like asking if stabbing someone with a knife can kill them; it can, but not always, depending on other factors. OB shows Kal attacking a Spren with Syl, and Syl asking if they killed it, and RoW clarifies that what's going on there doesn't kill the Spren, they just reform after a little while. The WoB still stands; if you know what you're doing, you can kill a Spren with a Shardblade. The fact that he says theoretically makes it sound like it's difficult or you need to do something more specific than just stab it. They can be killed wth Shardblades, the characters just don't know that yet. Such as? I'm asking mostly because it could possibly be one of the intentional holes in her backstory due to the DID.

Alder and Firesong already explained extremely well, so there's nothing for me to add there. I will say though, the theories were, if not well-researched, very reasonable extrapolations based on what we've seen. A Seventeenth Shard, a sort of Dawnshard equivalent that held Adonalsium together or otherwise gave him sentience, while unfounded, isn't very unreasonable, and I could see that existing as a concept in some form if Brandon had decided to take the Cosmere in a slightly different direction. You'd make a really good theorizer. I think you'd really like the Arcanum, if you don't already know about it. It's a database for all the WoBs (Words of Brandon), which are extra tidbits or information that Brandon lets us know that isn't always necessarily featured in the books. Welcome to the Shard

That's wild. I was expecting it to be some barely coherent jumble of Cosmere-relevant words, but that's actually a really cool idea. I know it's far from anything remotely canon, but an entity tracing itself back to the Shattering? Hidden knowledge about the nature of the Shards and Adonalsium? The Heralds reuniting? a Battle across all three Realms? That would be such an epic story, even if it wouldn't fit the themes or context of the Cosmere. That's really cool.

But it is. Nightblood acts like a regular steel sword if you try to use it against Aluminum. Just because he doesn't interact with the Aluminum field doesn't means there's no field there at all. Aluminum is all-powerful and nullifying, but not in exactly the same ways for every single Invested Art. It's a false dichotomy, the analogy is inherently flawed. We know that Aluminum does have a field, and it affects EA. To use your analogy, instead of a curtain blocking the light, it's a rod that emanates a field through which light from the EA flashlight cant pass. But in that same field, the Forgery flashlight does work, unless you try it directly on the rod. It's the same with Nightblood, if you shine his flashlight in the field it works, but not on the rod directly. In contrast, the Invested Healing flashlight doesn't work in the field at all, like the EA Flashlight. Invested Arts interact differently with Aluminum, so that's why there's diversity in the end result.