Leuthie

Couple things: Wit technically broke his agreement with Odium. Odium isn't aware of it because Hoid stopped the bubble before Odium could be made aware of it. Rayse had beef with Hoid. Taravangian only knows that beef through whatever memories Odium transferred to him. Evidence from the Epilogue says that Taravangian is more interested in what Hoid knows than any beef Rayse once had with him. TOdium just doesn't know how to get that information without cluing Hoid in to the fact that Rayse is dead. Whatever the agreement is between Hoid and Odium that protects Hoid, it never precluded removing short term memory stored in Breaths. TOdium removed the Breaths while stating that he could do so without harming. So I don't think there's anything here. TOdium is not aware of Hoid interfering with Odium's corrupting of Kaladin. Since he isn't aware, there is no danger to Hoid.

He does confirm that once you go to the Beyond, you don't come back. That pretty much rules out classical reincarnation.

I don't think the memories of torture are what is ailing the Heralds. They're temporarily cured by large amounts of Honor's Investiture in their proximity. They have a magical issues (Identity, Connection, Investiture), not mental health issues. Some combination of BAM, Dalinar/Stormfather/Tanavast Cognitive Shadow, and whatever Dalinar is having Kaladin do with Ishar in book 5 will cure them. Erasing memories won't be part of it.

From Brandon's descriptions, Autonomy's avatars are large enough chunks of Investiture to be considered Shards themselves. Autonomy creates autonomous Shards out of its own Investiture.

I know 2 people much like Adolin. Prime athletes as kids. Perfect grades. Socially perfect. Held none of their abilities over anyone else in any way. Always looked for ways to use their abilities to help others. Everyone likes them, even people who hate each other and everyone else. Married interesting people. Will give you the shirts of their backs if it would help you out no matter what's going on in their own lives. I know 2 of them, yet I've never expected anyone I know to live up to them. I don't even expect them to live up to them. I can understand your first paragraph. I can't understand your second. "This person shouldn't exist because it would make us all look bad" is such a sad attitude to carry around with you.

I don't trust any history of the Recreance. Every Radiant had to have made the decision to abandon Oaths. There's no evidence that half of them decided, with a protracted war killing the other half, etc. This was a community-wide decision and a universal act to dispand the Knights Radiant and remove surgebinding from Roshar. As such, the Skybreakers didn't quietly betray the other Orders. Nor would the others allow an entire order to decide to not take part. I believe the Skybreakers were left behind to make sure all Radiants broke Oaths, as a police force, to prosecute any that refused. Once assured that all others broke Oaths, they would do so themselves. When the Skybreakers saw that spren were killed by the act of breaking Oaths, they couldn't very well kill their own spren. They didn't grow their order, however, and eventually it mostly died off to old age. Except for Nale. He couldn't die, nor could he break Oaths. As an aside, it's possible that the Recreance itself was a reason why Nale bonded with a highspren in the first place. To be part of the monitoring team. He eventually regrew the Skybreakers to watch for the return of Radiants, essentially continuing the reason they didn't abandon Oaths with everyone else in the first place. Only, by this time, he was insane and decided that Radiants must die to stop the return of the Desolations.

Nightblood is weird. I have a feeling that knowing exactly how Nightblood works will open up a lot of Cosmere knowledge. He changes Matter to Investiture instantly. Does the Investiture retain its Intent? When it leaks gaseous Investiture, the Investiture is black. Does the Investiture change in the process of "destruction" or does Nightblood change the Investiture as it holds it? It seems like Nightblood can't send the Investiture back to the Spiritual. The steel of its blade holds as much Investiture as it can, then the Investiture leaks out as black smoke, returning to the Spiritual on its own once free. Since the Investiture is just being held in the Physical Realm, it probably doesn't affect Nightblood's personality much, if at all. The grogginess Nightblood exhibits probably has to do with the inability of the steel to hold anymore Investiture with the Cognitive aspect of Nightblood reacting accordingly, like a human would when full. When enough Investiture leaks out, Nightblood "wakes up" and gets hungry again. My vote is for the Odium Investiture it just sucked up having no great effect on Nightblood.

The process was from Taravangian's point of view, and happened much quicker than it took to read. I don't think Taravangian's soul was actually taken from his body before it Connected to the Odium Shard. From Taravangian's point of view, he was never pulled to the Beyond, never had to ignore that pull and make use of Investiture to stay in the Cognitive Realm. While his body was dead, he was still Connected to it, could still, for example, be saved by a Radiant healing. His Cognitive and Spiritual aspects were close enough to Odium to extend the death process, even if the whole event had lasted long enough to pull T's soul away under normal circumstances. In short, Kelsier was long dead, his soul only kept from the Beyond by power he picked up while trapped in the Well, when he picked up Preservation. Taravangian's soul was still Connected to his body, held in place by Odium's power and the short amount of time that the body had actually died.

I think you have this the wrong way around. Roshar's ecosystem is evolutionarily linked to localized free Investiture (Stormlight). Most likely, Investiture itself is inextricably linked to light and sound (and rhythm). The major difference between Roshar and other planets we've seen is that Roshar has a cyclical release of free Investiture into the Physical Realm that has defined its flora, fauna and geography. Sel's Investiture is locked in its Cognitive Realm. Scadrial and Nalthis are more "normal", with all Investiture locked in the Spiritual Realm. The first test of this outside Roshar would have to be on Scadrial mists, Scadrial's version of gaseous Investiture. Specific rhythms should attract them or cause them to retreat. Sanderson's Second Law of Magic: Limitations > Power. Creation of a power that specifically limits what magic can do comports very well with this law. Going forward in the Cosmere, having direct counters to magic will be important to make sure the magic systems don't overpower the stories. Sanderson isn't going to limit them to Roshar.

Between Desolations there was no fighting. No one left on Roshar would want to fight after something called a Desolation ended. I'm willing to bet there were always humans that fought on the Fused's side and Singers that fought on the Herald's side. By the time fighting stopped, the world was destroyed and both sides helped each other rebuild. And I feel like singers in workform were extremely helpful in rebuilding. Also keep in mind that Cultivation probably doesn't want the race that was there before humans to be completely wiped out, no matter which side anyone is fighting on. Neither did Honor. When the singers were rendered mindless after the False Desolation, there was no reason to fear them. I'm sure many were killed out of spite, but their utility as slaves was far too inviting to waste.

There's a good possibility that Ruin's Intent can be found in Nightblood and in everything Nightblood destroys. I don't think Ruin (Ati) had a hand in creating Nightblood. Ruin was locked in the Well of Ascension for centuries and was let out for like a decade with most of his power locked in tiny beads hidden around Scadrial. And his attention was a bit consumed with his own planet at the time. Then he died. Not a whole lot of time to help out with the creation of Nightblood.

To be fair, you didn't address it. You gave a tidbit of information that could help. Using Breaths isn't directly using Investiture. The Investiture of Breaths never leaves the Spiritual (as described by you, the "spiderweb"). You "Endow" your Breath to another object (or person) and provide a Command and Intent. The work is done in the Spiritual and the results are seen in the Physical. Stormlight is free Investiture (free as in free software, not free beer). You have to have some Connection to something that allows it to be stored (spren, in the case of Radiants; big swords, in the case of Heralds). I don't believe the holding of free Investiture is innately dangerous. Stormlight leaks, and leaks even more the more you're holding. Pressure release valve is always open, one could say. However, control with large amounts of Investiture is probably much harder than control with small amounts. So holding a huge amount of Stormlight and pushing on someone may cause that someone to explode if you don't know what you're doing. That's dangerous. With Breath, you have nicely packaged and controlled amounts of Investiture to accomplish tasks. Shards can nudge the magic systems (change the effects of metals, create specific spren to bond with, limit the availability and extent of abilities, etc.) but the shape of the magic systems themselves are dictated by the worlds themselves, not the Shards. Hence why Voidbinding and Fused look exactly like hacked versions of surgebinding and Radiants/Heralds, respectively.

Think of Breaths like portable coffee mugs full of steaming hot coffee. Breaths are designed to be held and transported around. They also refill automatically when you use up the coffee. And you can hand off the mugs to other people. And instead of being inconvenient and heavy, carrying 2000 mugs of coffee around makes you not age. Or something. Think of Stormlight like coffee being held in colanders. The colanders are filled by a huge storm that rains coffee and fills them as it goes by. Then, when you want coffee, you have to take some from the colanders and hold it in your mouth until you're ready to drink it. And the coffee's hot. And you keep swallowing a little and spitting some out all the time. The metaphor kind of breaks down, but yeah.

Breaths are actually large amounts of Investiture. Pool a lot of them together and you have huge amounts of Investiture. Heightenings aren't part of Nalthis' magic system, they are a Cosmere wide result of holding a lot of Investiture. Elanthians are similarly Invested and have similar increases in sensory experience. Every magic system has Commands and Intents. They just express them differently. AonDor expresses Command by drawing Aons, with Intent being pulled from your Cognitive state. Radiants and Allomancers are directly connected to the source of Investiture, so Command and Intent are expressed internally. Nalthis' magic system is more external and obvious, but the primary mechanics are the same. In all cases, the magic user provides Command, Intent and Investiture to make something happen. Nalthis just makes the whole process more explicit.

I think the mists hang around as they do because the ecology of Scandrial has no use for them. Roshar's ecology and Stormlight have a cyclical relationship. Stormlight is always being used and cycled through. If Stormlight isn't stored in a gem, it dissipates into the system immediately. Even a gem just makes it dissipate more slowly. This has to do with the world itself and the Connections involved. Scadrial doesn't require Investiture, so the mists just hang around. At least that's how I interpret it all.

I don't think the Unmade can exist without the Voidlight that now partially composes them. Remove the Voidlight and they die. Raboniel was replacing part of the Sibling with Voidlight. She didn't get far enough for the process to be permanent (not enough of the Sibling was replaced by Voidlight). I think the "remake" the unmade would be to replace the Voidlight parts with the original Investiture, not just remove the Voidlight. The power Taravangian holds is so much more vast than even a Bondspren like Stormfather that the bond would do nothing, if even possible. Todium would have to pick up another Shard if he wants to temper the Hate that way.

Good interpretation, but I think it adds an unnecessary layer to the Stormfather/Honor/Tanavast entity that's already complicated enough. There's also the parallel given in the last chapter of RoW (not the epilogue) which I can't describe here. My interpretation: Wit/Hoid/Cephandrius knew Tanavast, since he knew all of the original Vessels. Wit says he was once given a drink by Tanavast. Wit also likes that Odium is imprisoned, and that prison was built by Tanavast and Tanavast died defending it. Fleet is the result of Wit distilling positive parts of Tanavast down to a simple character. The story of Fleet is Tanavast's story distilled into a race. Chanarach is added to the story for familiarity, not accuracy. Racing the storm is a metaphor but also ends up being the final outcome. Fleet ran this race until it killed him, then continued until he actually rode the storm for eternity. That seems a bit close to the mark for Tanavast. Instead of a race, it was a fight against Odium. The Oathpact was necessary to keep Odium at bay, but was an impossible promise for those involved to keep. They broke it over and over again, but they kept trying until Tanavast was finally killed, riding the storm for eternity.

I always forget about the Mists. But there are two mists now: one light that represents Preservation's power and one dark that represents Ruin's power. So there is some semblance of color there. The Well of Ascension gave off a rhythm. I'm willing to bet each mist would respond to a different tone, and be repelled by an anti-tone. We just haven't seen these on screen, yet.

Dawnsingers, Dawncities and Dawnshards are probably all related in some way and probably existed on Roshar prior to the Shattering. Adonalsium setting up the Roshar system as a garden of eden and a prison for powerful things makes a lot of sense; there's nothing I can think of that such a revelation would be inconsistent with. The Unmade all being corrupted spren of Dawncities is definitely possible. We don't know enough about Unmade or Dawncities to make a counterargument, and the only attempt we've seen to unmake something was to unmake the spren of a city. I can see the Dawncities spren being corrupted by Odium, being thrown to the wilds when their cities were destroyed, and becoming more and more insane over time (ala the Heralds) until some of them are now mindless and others mindless without direct access to Odium. The destruction of these cities coming due to Odium's corruption of their spren would make a great apocalyptic lead in to the Oathpact, which seems like such a last resort kind of move. The cymatic patterns being what's left of Urithiru style cities after they were destroyed is fun. Were they created with vibratory patterns, or were they destroyed with such powerful sounds that they left vibratory patterns? The former means Adonalsium created cymatic pattern cities and pre-Oathpact surgebinders destroyed them. The latter probably implies that Dawnshards were used to bring enough power to bear (or efficiently use the power available enough*) to obliterate 9 (10?) entire cities. *I believe that Dawnshards don't add power to magic. They aren't amplifiers in the way speakers use power to make sound louder. I think Dawnshards are more like the lenses used in lasers to amplify the power of light by focusing it. Dawnshards take your power (Investiture) and your purpose (Intent) and use the power in the most efficient way to achieve the purpose. So a single Dustbringer can destroy a city using a Dawnshard because the Dawnshard will use the power available in a way that will achieve the destruction. In the case of Dawncities being destroyed, Dawnshards using relatively small amounts of power to create strong vibrations that shake the cities into rubble and leave permanent cymatic patterns just seems right.

It would be hard to show on many worlds. Sel Investiture is chaotic due to being locked in the Cognitive realm. Scadrian Investiture is held closely by Harmony and doled out through closed systems. Taldain Investiture seems a bit more out in the open and may be more testable for tones. Nalthis Investiture is locked behind colors and Breaths. Aethers and whatever is on Ashyn we don't know about. Roshar is the only place where Investiture flows freely and is part of the geology, ecology and zoology. "Light" is free Investiture, so you're partly right there. However, it's strange that all three types of Investiture have Lights, anti-Lights and Tones. I would assume, should other Investiture be testable in the same ways Navani and Raboniel did, they would have their own Lights, Anti-lights and Tones, as well...at least on Roshar. I think Brandon is using this series to show us how this stuff works Cosmere-wide. There are different ways of accessing the Investiture on different planets, but all Investiture has the same set of properties and should be compatible with the things Navani and Raboniel discovered.

No one is assuming anything. They're speculating. And it seems that spren capable of Nahel bonds that result in Surgebinding are intentional creations of Honor and Ishar at the time the Oaths were introduced. The possibilities and controls might open up a bit with the death of Tanavast, but I would guess adding to the possible Bondsmith list would require direct intervention by a new Vessel for Honor, not just a change in the general Connections of Roshar.

And even if Harmony were attuned to listen to any use of Allomancy, Hoid has plenty of other tools and can simply avoid using Allomancy when he's hiding on Scadrial.

I didn't notice you were the original poster. I don't mean to pile on you, really. I hardly ever notice who is posting something, I just react to the post. We must just disagree a lot. Yes, I understand the complexity of Odium's Intent. Maybe we disagree on its effects though. I see the results of the Intent as inflaming emotion and leaving one empty of it, as reflected by the word "void" that follows Odium around. When one is consumed by rage, when the rage retreats you aren't suddenly full of other passions. You're left empty. That is the result of Odium. But I could be wrong. Yes, my posts were mostly in jest. The idea that someone can "cure" depression by picking up a Shard is to not understand what depression is. To say that picking up the Shard that everyone aware of Shards is afraid of and agrees shouldn't exist without he context of other Intents would help someone's depression and result in a good Vessel-Shard relationship seems pretty wrong to me. Kaladin's red-gold eyes was to show Odium's influence, yes. Odium wanted to make Kaladin his champion, aided by Vyre's nightmares. He almost succeeded. I don't think Odium or anything else was preparing Kaladin to pick up the Shard. Kaladin's nature is about as far from Odium's as one can get. I think that's one of the points of Kaladin's characterization. All of that was contained in my first 2 posts, I think.

Shards aren't Omniscient. If they aren't looking for Hoid, it's probably easy for him to escape notice, considering he's just another heavily Invested Human. He can use aluminum or Allomancy or Breaths to hide his Investiture. I don't think having Breaths makes someone stick out to Endowment. Nearly everyone on Nalthis has Breaths. Many have hundreds. Someone with 200 Breaths going through Endowments Perpendicularity might be an uncommon thing, but not rare. Someone hiding their Investiture levels while going through the perpendicularity might be even less uncommon. Hoid's Fortune ability probably allows him to know when good times to go through perpendicularities (when the Shard isn't looking) occur. He has lots of tools.

Endowment is more focused on her thing... I don't think Nightblood was some combined plan by Endowment and Cultivation. It doesn't seem to fit Endowments Intent or personality through the letters to Hoid or other WoB. But I can definitely see Cultivation deciding to put its use into motion with purpose. She had direct control of it at some point as Nightwatcher offered it to Dalinar. A few years later, Nale has it and gives it to Szeth, who was an indirect creation of Cultivation through her direct creation, Taravangian. That's exactly how I interpret Endowment's blustering. And I'm sure Hoid took it the same way. "Sure ya do. I'll keep that in mind next time I'm there!"