ChillPenguin

Couldn’t the charging of spheres be linked to intent? If he’s that smart, T-Odium doesn’t need to pay attention, he just sets up a permanent filter. If you put them out and are actually against him your intent blocks the charging.

We don’t know if Hoid could even hold Nightblood. He might get sick, like Vivenna or worse! We assume also that because Hoid is kind to others that he is good but we don’t really know that he is good. He could be extremely manipulative. Given that Nightblood reacts due to a person’s perception of themselves (if they are evil or not) it’s really hard to say. I’d bet Hoid doesn’t want to take that risk.

I think the reason the Grand Knell works with instruments is because it is so big. I’m not sure there is anything in the physical realm like that except for pools/perpendicularities. Maybe the Highstorm could have been such a thing but I’m not sure that would be big enough to work at cosmic distances. I expect these kind of things follow the 1/r^2 rule of reduced intensity. 

I think it depends on whether you are a fight tyranny no matter the cost or a survive to fight another day kind of person. I’d know Odium was up to something and that by myself I didn’t have much leverage. Even though I’d wonder about another leader’s motivations, Jasnah being there would show she intends to support. If I knew the position that the singers and Fused have with Odium there is no question I’d refuse him - why would he treat humans any differently?

I hear what you’re saying - it’s frustrating to not have mistborn at all but Sanderson’s books have to change or else it’s stale. He’s redistributed the power to get more longevity out of the magic system. Now that I think about it, something similar has happened in Stormlight. I think we will get mistborn back someday and this shift adds more depth while reducing the possibility of power creep. We see in Sunlit Man that Radiants and still feared but they’re now mixed in with regular people that have access to investiture tech. Making the Radiants and Mistborn take a step back gives the regular folks a chance to develop and have some impact.

Well this rosy outlook depends on how the future books go.

This probably belongs under Mistborn or cosmere but yeah, I feel you. He burned out young but he sure burned brightly. Hats off to Wayne!

Maybe the ability to communicate with the dead dragons involves some magic that dragons don’t typically know, or don’t have access to (e.g., being warped by a dawnshard). Hoid isn’t the only ancient cosmere member to hide things from others (Vasher). 

On 9/8/2025 at 7:49 PM, Stigmadiabolicum said:

he specifically says hes the only known living shard to have "performed the.." ____

 

So either a ritual, an ability..or could be as simple as doing some arcanist tradition, performed the dance, or the X or Y tradition, as a nicety? But yes, could be performed the thing that releases his investiture from scadrial to allow it to be used abroad? But we know shards are mostly divorced from their invested arts..the fact preservation and ruin created scadrial does make a lot of things they can do unique to the planet. 

 

I do agree the fact he clarifies living implies a past shard could have done it, Virtuosity, Honor 

 

But the fact it's said in relation to him being nice, makes me doubt it's some crazy shard reveal, hopefully he answers in a WoB so we don't have to wait 15 years to find out. 

I doubt he’d say in a WOB - why not just say it in the book? If he wanted to reveal it he’d have done it there. Hats off to anyone that tries but my money is on a RAFO card for this one.

When Ed’s faith is questioned he gives this reason so it’s something that has deep meaning to him. This doesn’t mean it’s a cosmere/planet shaking event. If it’s not though then how does anyone know about it? Anyone being escorted after dying won’t be around very long and can’t tell those in the physical realm about it - maybe Wax is the only person who lived to tell that tale. Does Sazed talk to other Pathians?

Keep in mind that Sanderson has messed with us on wording before. Kaladin was close to the 4th ideal and licked his lips and said “I will” a few times but ultimately his fourth ideal did not start with “I will…”

Patji and the islands always had an autonomy/avatar sort of feel to me. I suspect that if the perpendicularity was due to a shard being present it would be more obvious to the Cosmere and easier to find so I don’t think the perpendicularity is hers.

She COULD be there. We don’t know how long it takes for a shardpool to move and maybe there’s some intent related to that. I completely missed this reference and I give it a pretty good likelihood that she’s there hiding from something.

On 10/1/2025 at 3:09 AM, Oltux72 said:

I don't see exactly a way out. Wind and Truth destroyed too much to have a full restoration at the end. The Stormfather is dead after all. Honor has left Roshar. Cultivation has left. They are not going to return. The Blackthorn is ready to be unleashed. Ba-Ado-Mishram and Sja-Anat will be working in the background.

 

There are a few glimmers of hope around. For starters, Retribution is probably not as in control of both shards as it seems (and we really don’t see much). There were enough seeds planted in WaT that one or both shards could rebel against him. We already saw precedent for a shard abandoning its vessel with Tanavast.

Another bit of hope is that there are other planets out there that are strong. They’re going to be the other side to the Sunmaker’s Gambit. This pressure will only increase issues from my first paragraph.

The last piece is that our heroes are learning and getting stronger. Yes there have been losses along the way (Dalinar) but they weren’t fruitless losses.

Things really are grim, and I didn’t enjoy seeing our heroes lose, but Sanderson wrote in some openings. Once it looked like Odium (Rayse) was going to be a real pain and then all of a sudden he just gets stabbed with Nightblood. Just like that poof. Yes some things will get worse before they get better (like TOdium happening), but I’m not worried. I just hate the waiting part.

On 8/31/2025 at 1:11 PM, Nitpicking said:

Was Plate dead? I mean, the subspren who form it didn't participate in any Oaths, but they were Connected to the Radiant, so I don't really know.

I agree, I’m not sure the plate was actually dead, not in the same way Deadeyes were. We know they were content, not screaming like the Deadeyes, so maybe they’re more like the old Fabrials without an energy source. The old fabrials seem to not mind being an Oathgate spren etc, and the Sibling wasn’t upset, just sleepy.

You’re correct though that the unoathed spren found another way to be connected to the spiritual realm (Investiture is conserved in the Cosmere so it had to come from somewhere). A shard of Honor makes the most sense based on what we saw in WaT. 

My guess it has to do with some kind of resonance. Frequencies seem very important in the Cosmere (tones of Roshar, pulses for metallic arts). The Radiant has their own “spiritual frequency” and so do the spren. If they match well enough, they can start to bond and then shift more into alignment with one another, kind of how Navani and the Sibling brought their tones into alignment to make one tone, Towerlight.

So maybe it’s like Windrunners are from 100-102 MHz (you know where the popular music is) and Elsecallers are around 90 MHz (news and NPR). I’m sure spren and Radiants can stretch outside their normal band but it would be unusual for them to resonate outside their usual band of frequencies. I didn’t use Skybreakers in my analogy because I don’t know what kind of music they’d be.

To circle back to Aux and Sigzil, I think it’s more like Sig is both Windrunner and Skybreaker. Aux helps him tap into the Spiritual Realm and Sig will probably always have some connection to Windrunners, unless it’s severed by someone else.

Up until WaT, I had a hard time identifying with Lift. A big part of that, I think, is that Brandon is hiding her trauma/issues for the back half and we just see her messing around but don’t see why. I tried to chalk it up to her being a kid, and that helped a little.
 

I understand that Brandon will explore these things in the last 6 books, and she’s not the only character that’s been given this treatment. I can’t say I would definitely like her if I knew more about her, but it might help

On 7/31/2025 at 4:54 AM, JustQuestin2004 said:

It definitely didn't help, but I'm pretty sure the main implication on why this is happening is because of a slight edge that Ruin has over Preservation. Because back when they first made Scadrial, they made a deal and part of that deal was for Preservation to give up a part of his Investiture to humanity so they would have slightly more Preservation in them than Ruin. Balance was once maintained when Preservation tore a part of Ruin's power off of him and made the Pits of Hathsin, but the Pits don't exist anymore and it seems that Harmony won't willingly create Atium for some reason.

The flaw lies with Sazed himself, I think. If the problem is that there's too much Ruin and not enough Preservation than he could just remake the Pits and siphon off Ruin's Investiture until they were balanced again, but he hasn't. Maybe Sazed wants this to happen and become Discord, we don't know anything about what will happen afterwards, other than some ominous implications. 

I’m pretty sure it’s because Ruin’s intent blocks the creation of the pits. If I were that shard, you bet I’d block becoming weaker, especially when it looks like Ruin is going to win out.

Maybe Sazed could create a huge amount of destruction to make Ruin happy and distracted and “whoops I made the pits too? Oh well.”

Something on that scale though would probably go too much against preservation… and so Sazed as Harmony is in deep trouble. Maybe another shard could help him but why would they?

2 hours ago, SourCandyLime said:

Infinity - 5 is still infinity

 

Infinity - infinity/10 is still infinity.

the power the shards hold each is 1/16 of infinity. The way the shards combine is the mixing of intents. No longer 2 shards, but 2 ideas in one power

You are right and yet two things:

1. We know some infinities are bigger than others. All whole numbers are infinite but then the set of all rational numbers must be twice as big, although that is also infinite.

2. It’s not just the potential in the spiritual realm but also the investiture that the vessel can use. In the spiritual realm, the amount of Honor and Odium are the same (same size infinity), but some of the investiture of Honor split off and is already in the Heralds  Unless Odium did something similar, the available investiture to Taravangian would be Honor Infinity < Odium Infinity.

Brandon has made comments about other cosmere things related to this but I won’t mention them here.

Odium may be able to drive Retribution’s intent but that doesn’t mean that Honor will be happy about it  At least now, it seems that will be his biggest weakness.

From WaT we see that the spiritual realm has all the info you could ever want, but you need a connection to that moment. I would guess, if memories are different than that, it works the same way.  If someone had Adonalsium’s hairpin or some other way of forging the connection I think it’s possible.

I know the shards were a part of Adonalsium so that should count but maybe it’s not enough. Maybe you need a connection to all the shards to see back that far.  

If not foreshadow, certainly a part of the larger theme/discourse of what an oath means. Sigzil clearly struggles with having given oaths then been unable to keep them. In SLM we see he wants to live that way still, even though in the beginning he was trying to push others away to protect them from his problems and to survive.

All the extra power he got made it difficult to live that way and he clearly resents that fact.

Also, in WaT we see Aux struggling with what oaths mean. He connects with Sig soon after he broke his oath to his windspren, so they are both primed for this to be a major part of their relationship. 
 

I don’t think the end game of this discussion is Unoathed anyway. Unoathed are also just a piece of the story. We still have 5 more Stormlight books!

I certainly hope we get to see all of them get written. I wonder if Brandon is going to outline what he thinks the answer is or if in the end he’s going give his readers the same answer Szeth got: it’s up to you to decide what the real answer/truth is

On 5/23/2025 at 12:01 PM, Jult said:

I haven't heard this take before either and I really really like it.

Dalinar's words do sound reminiscent of a Command that an Awakener would use. I originally read it as Honor thinking for itself when it split off; especially because it surprised Dalinar. But I think your interpretation is much better. Honor wasn't thinking for itself. It was obeying the Command given by Dalinar. Dalinar just hadn't realized it.

Some follow-up thoughts:

• Would these pieces of Honor be independent from one another? Or would they have some kind of collected consciousness between them like a hivemind of sorts?
  • If they are of one mind, does that include the chunk of Honor held by Taravangian? Will that chunk become progressively dissatisfied with him as a host as it learns about "true" honor?
• Will Honor's changed perception of (lowercase) honor change the nature of the Shard itself? In the way that Rayse claimed 'Passion' was a more fitting name than 'Odium', will Honor eventually want to change its own name to something with a similar but more nuanced meaning like Integrity or Decency?
  • Or perhaps these pieces of Honor will each claim their own identity as one 'facet' of Honor (e.g. Integrity, Decency, Honesty, Virtue, Morality)?

I believe Honor’s splinters are separate but connected. I think it would take a LOT to change the intent of a splinter away from the rest of the shard, probably dawnshard level power to do it. I’d be inclined to think that if a splinter was trying to change that investiture too much, the investiture would leave the vessel. 

On 5/7/2025 at 9:14 AM, Epicdaf said:

Spoilers for the ENTIRE cosmere ahead. Click away if you haven't read Wind and Truth and Sunlit Man in particular. This post will theorize about the future of the cosmere, so if you're not up to date, click away. 

Ok. Still with me?

Aux has become one of my favourite spren so far (Syl and Stormdady included).
Anyway, since reading SLM I've been thinking back to the end of WAT and the implications of the "unoathed". 

Aux considers himself a knight radiant and even mentions that he swore the oaths. We know that he was fundamentally changed by the Dawnshard whilst Sigzil was in posession of it. This granted them unique abilities, but if they hadn't had access to the dawnshard, I would love to know the mechanics and implications of a spren swearing the oaths.

Will we see other spren such as Notum do the same? He is the only other spren to perform "human-spren" abilities, such as when he "bonded" armor spren at the end of WAT. 

The implications of this are so interesting and could lead to interesting results. Maybe other bonding entities such as cognitive shadows or other sapient forms of investiture, will perform similar feats. I am ready for the space age and cannot wait to read and find out. 

Share your thoughts below. 


PS. 
Dear admin, thanks for bearing with me when moving my posts from place to place. I hope I got it right this time. If not, please spike me with a duralumin spike!

It’s been a little bit since I read WaT, but wasn’t it said that Highspren are affected by the oaths differently? I feel like I remember they also take the oaths along with their radiant. If that’s the case then there is nothing unusual, other than the Highspren bond being different.
 

If Sigzil was hanging around then maybe I could see him learning about the unoathed and collecting more spren for the armor and shard blade (for Aux). What happens to a spren that’s not bonded that leaves Roshar? Weren’t spren sustained on the thoughts of Rosharians? Oddly, I also find it unlikely they’d find Sig’s armor spren anywhere but on Roshar.

Maybe they don’t leave Roshar so soon and are actually involved in the back half of Stormlight. I can see it going either way, Brandon never filling in the details for Sig… or it being one of those “I’ll get to it if I can” moments that maybe becomes a novella. I guess it also depends how involved dawnshards are going to be.

22 hours ago, Riino said:

Entering Lift arc, where she goes farming and starts trying to grow a super food that is heavily invested and has a small profile. She uses towerlight to grow a lot of these plants and then just takes these with her wherever she goes and has a super investiture bank on her.

Yes this ^^^ 100% this is how Lift will be effective in the back half. Using science to make advancements isn’t really her thing though so she’s going to need some help. Maybe Navani will wake up and help her?

Of course Lift is going to build a reputation like Vasher did and life will get very dangerous for her. Word will get around fast that there’s a radiant that can function without storm light. 

On 5/2/2025 at 2:48 PM, Returned said:

We don't know what Hoid's designs really are, so it's possible that the Recreance was basically irrelevant to him (in that dimension of his schemes, at least).

To suggest that he should have been there requires us to think of reasons that the Recreance was bad for him, which we don't have. The OP's suggestion seems to me to be off:

This strikes me as the opposite of what's presented in the books. The Shards away from Roshar don't appear to care much about what happened there provided that Rayse remained trapped ("Rayse is contained"). Hoid very much wanted some sort of intervention to deal with Rayse and struggled to persuade others to help with that, though the only specific actions in that direction that we know of took place in the timeframe of WoK-- that factor may not have been meaningful around the time of the Recreance.

We also know that Hoid was specifically afraid of Rayse and being caught by him on Roshar, and that is not the sort of thing which has concerned him much anywhere else. Roshar may have been uniquely dangerous and going there when Rayse's opposition suffered a serious blow (losing Honor entirely) may not have been an appealing or worthwhile prospect even if there were some benefit to be had.

So in summary I think that the "need" which Hoid's magic causes him to meet may not have had any relation to the Recreance, that Hoid would have faced extreme danger in trying to interfere with the event, and that the tenuous balance on Roshar was very much not something he wanted to preserve anyways.

At this point in the Cosmere works we know enough about Hoid's mode of operation, and that mode makes it hard for him to be anything but a plot device. He winds up where he's most needed when it's most necessary that he be there, and whatever that specific situation is, it is (so far) self-authorizing and decisive. Had it mattered, he would have been there. Therefore, empirically, Hoid's presence wasn't necessary and probably would not have been helpful, productive, nor meaningful.

By Hoid not hiding anywhere else do you mean from other shards? We know for a fact he hid from Harmony at least - but of course he knew Ati and Leras but didn’t really know Sazed or what two shared would do. I agree with you on your other points though. 
 

That being said, there’s nothing to say Hoid wasn’t up to something somewhere else. Could he have been on Sel at that time? I guess Elantris was more recent than that.

I think we know that the Cosmere follows conservation laws, meaning investiture is conserved as energy is for us. Brandon hasn’t said if entropy is involved or if Lift gets 100% from anything she digests or just the calories. Either way, I would guess it would be neutral at best. If she got stormlight/warlight/towerlight she could launder that into lifelight by growing food with those. 

I think Feruchemy storing kinetic energy of the molecules would be ok for a spaceship. Ultimately conventional heating devices increase the kinetic energy of the molecules to make a room, or a device, warmer. In fact it might be the most efficient way to cool devices in space. There are many cases where it’s really hard to cool some electronics in space (e.g. use liquid helium until it runs out in a scientific satellite).

The metalmind/medallion will run out eventually but you could swap them around to provide heating/cooling where it’s needed.  

There are a ton of scientific ways to separate electronic signals (Fourier Transforms for example) and light (polarization, gratings, prisms). “Light” in the Cosmere though seems to be more substance than those things and at least right now, Scadrial seems to be the closest to any of that technology. I also feel that Trellium would need to be involved and that’s got to be hard to get. I also would expect Harmony wouldn’t want that info about splitting Harmonium to leave Scadrial. 

23 hours ago, bdoble97 said:

Such great points. I read Asimov for the first time two years my grandmother was telling how amazing he was. I just felt underwhelmed. I guess i a better way for me to explain myself is Tolkien and Asimov are Bobby Orr and Wayne Gretzy and Sanderson is Conor Mcdavid 

I just read all of Azimov’s main works in the past 16 months (17 books). They aren’t all created equal and part of it is the way he went about writing it. The first 3 Foundation novels are arguably his best and were written as  serial short stories, his best style. He didn’t really plan that all out, wrote the middle books randomly and tied them together with the last Foundation books only at urging from others. There are many SciFi books that are better but I am glad to have read them. As with Asimov, Tolkien was a modern literary pioneer. I wouldn’t be reading Sanderson if I hadn’t been excited by Tolkien in my youth. Both of these authors are burdened by writing in an era that was culturally different than now - for example female protagonists are hard to find.

Sanderson, on the other hand, has this large outline of everything, for which we have only seen a portion of it. He’s very prolific and I do love his stories! I agree that Sanderson has learned from those that came before him. You would want those that come later to be improved in some way. Does Sanderson do everything better? I dare say no, but a better overall writer? For at least Asimov I say yes. It’s been too long since I’ve read Tolkien to judge there.