AonSoo

On 4/8/2025 at 4:08 PM, Obeythelaw7 said:

I admit I was kind of confused by the parts where Nohadon talks to Dalinar about Honor and Tanavast. This theory explains that so much better, I can't wait to see how her plans unfold in the next arc.

Same here.

On 4/6/2025 at 7:24 AM, LeondeBowa said:

it seems really obvious it's Cultivation.

Yeah this whole scene makes a lot more sense now that you point that out, and I always thought the Valor idea was weird because we have so much evidence that they were never on Roshar and it would be hard to have a connection to Dalinar.

Thanks! I was just talking with a friend about ways you could kill gold compounders and if nuking them would work or if they could survive a nuke by Duralumin burning the gold compounding. So if a gold compounder with Duralumin(Alom) and Zinc(Ferr). They used Zinc to be accurate when they used their gold, compounded gold and burn Duralumin, it would heal you enough at each moment to survive the blast, but would be over instantly. So probably not work, but I guess it depends on how close to instantaneous it would be. 

How would burning Duralumin affect compounding?

YKYASW you read all the replies on this thread and and think they all sound normal.

On 1/16/2025 at 12:47 PM, Leuthie said:

Cultivation left a lot of herself on Roshar. The Sibling, the spren, the simple fact that she was there so long. She has to have a plan to return. 

I agree. She will come back. 

On 1/3/2025 at 8:32 PM, BridgeBoi said:

I feel like cultivation will set up on sel. There is so much pontential there with all the magic systems. Plus it currently doesn't have a shard so she could control it. I definetalty feel that cultivation will true and manipulate the other shards, growing the shards of honor into true shards of honor and/or manipulating harmony so it can take actions.

I feel this is more likely than Scadrial. She went to Roshar to be away from others and didn't like Honor interacting with Odium. I also can see her setting up far away on an uninhabited planet.

Which flashbacks did you like the most and why?

Wait. Shouldn't Felt look Shin?

11 hours ago, MirkerLurker said:

For feruchemy, tin. The ability to dampen, mute, or blur the world around me - to whenever I wanted be able to reduce the overstimulation - would be amazing. (Also, they're called Windwhisperers, which come on, that's awesome).
For allomancy...I've gotta go with steel. It lets you fly. That's too strong of a draw.

That combo is called a Sharpshooter. Sounds almost as cool as Windwhisperers.

2,000 BEUs is what Sigzil used and it gives agelessness. Hmm... Sound familiar? The question is can 2,000 breaths give connection without holding a dawnshard and how can we tell if Felt does have 2,000?

From what I can tell he has between 1,000 and 50,000

3 minutes ago, Treamayne said:

Nor does Axindweth, when speaking Listener tongue in RoW (ch 52):

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The female gestured for permission, then sat next to Venli. She was the one with the rings on her exposed hand. Some kind of surgeon, Venli had been told. She didn’t seem important. Most everyone ignored her—she was basically one of the servants.

“It’s quite impressive, isn’t it?” the human said in the listener tongue, looking over the Shattered Plains. “Something terrible must have happened here. Doesn’t seem like those plateaus could have formed naturally.”

Venli attuned Anxiety. The woman spoke the words without a rhythm, yes, but they were perfectly understandable.

“How…” Venli said, then hummed to Betrayal.

“Oh, I’ve always been good with languages,” the female said. “My name is Axindweth. Though few here know me by that name, I give it to you.”

As for Worldhoppers and Agelessness, we have this WoB:

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Iceblade44

So White Sand [then Elantris] is earlier... Then how the heck old is Khriss then? Will we ever get an answer as to why every worldhopper is flippin' immortal?

Brandon Sanderson

There is some time-dilation going on. I'll explain it eventually; we're almost to the point where I can start talking about that. Suffice it to say that there's a mix of both actual slowing of the aging process and relative time going on, depending on the individual. Very few are actually immortal.

Faera

Implying that some are actually immortal?

Brandon Sanderson

Depends on which definition of immortal you mean.

• Doesn't age, but can be killed by conventional means. (You've seen some of these in the cosmere, but I'll leave you to discuss who.)
• Heals from wounds, but still ages. (Knights Radiant with Stormlight are like this.)
• Reborn when killed. (The Heralds.)
• Doesn't age and can heal, but dependent upon magic to stay this way, and so have distinct weakness to be exploited. (The Lord Ruler, among others.)
• Hive beings who are constantly losing individual members, but maintaining a persistent personality spread across all of them, immortal in that as long as too much of the hive isn't wiped out, the personality can persist. (The Sleepless.)
• Bits of sapient magic, eternal and endless, though the personality can be "destroyed" in specific ways. (Seons. Spren. Nightblood. Cognitive Shadows, like a certain character from Scadrial.)
• Shards (Really just a supercharged version of the previous category.)

And then, of course, there's Hoid. I'm not going to say which category, if any, he's in.

Some of these blend together--the Heralds, for example, are technically a variety of Cognitive Shadow. I'm not saying each of these categories above are distinct, intended to be the end-all definitions. They're off the cuff groupings I made to explain a point: immortality is a theme of the cosmere works--which, at their core, are experiments on what happens when men are given the power of deity.

<edited for length and relevance>

Stormlight Three Update #5 (Nov. 29, 2016)

 

Thanks! Axindweth is a know full feruchemist and is likely using connection and Identity. 
Here's what the copper mind has to say:

Quote

Blanking Identity and tapping Connection can cause someone to gain an accent for a particular area.^[36]

• Feruchemical Duralumin: In Feruchemy, Connection is stored in duralumin.^[9] Using this, a Feruchemist can communicate with others on foreign lands.^[26] Connection can also be used by anyone by wearing unsealed metalminds.^[37] These medallions are worn by a person who is in a land that is not their own, and they are then able to speak the language of the place they are in. A person wearing their medallion in their own land will still speak their own language, not the language of the person they are communicating with. Occasionally, words do not translate fully.

• Spiritual Adhesion: Using the Surge of Adhesion to manipulate spiritual, rather than purely physical forces, a Bondsmith can touch another person and forge a spiritual Connection between them. This allows the Bondsmith to temporarily speak whatever languages this other person can speak.^[23]

• Regal Forms of Power: By staying out in the Everstorm, singers are capable of bonding with a Voidspren, which has the effect of changing their form, which alters their physical appearance and mental capabilities.^[38] One Regal form of power is envoyform, which allows the user to have Connection to other cultures and allows the user to speak and read their languages.^[38][39]

• Ones Above: The Ones Above have a handheld device that is a language translator and can even translate written words.^[40]

• Nalthian Technology: Fort uses a computer tablet from Nalthis that is said to use Awakened predictive Connection circuits. While Fort uses the tablet to communicate with people who read and write the same language as him, the individual he received the tablet from used it to translate between languages.^[41]

• Dawnshard: At least one Dawnshard can Connect a user to their current location, allowing them to speak and read the local language.^[42] For Sigzil, this requires at least two-thousand BEUs.^[43][44]

• Hoid: Hoid has access to some manifestation of Investiture that allows him to manipulate the Spiritual attribute of Connection. The full extent of this ability is unknown, but its primary known use is to help Hoid speak the various languages of the worlds of the cosmere that he visits. The ability allows him to Connect to whatever land he is in, temporarily altering his Spiritual aspect to believe that he was raised in that place, allowing him to speak as a native.^[30]

I find that the only slightly likely ones are Feruchemy (Felt would need Identity and Connection) or Dawnshard (That would mean there were 3 on the planet at the same time)

Does the spike method work on every planet? Why spikes, are there other sorts of trauma that can cause the same effect?

I love all the scenes people brought up. I also liked the Rysn patent and dawnshard scene for some reason.

How about a Singer - Chasmfeind relationship. Venli and Thundercloud. (I don't think Venli and Thundercloud could actually work)

Hello! Which twinborn combo would you want?

2 minutes ago, MagicMaggot said:

So there is enough extreme time dilation around, be it Silverlight, the Dor's investiture, or just an overlong trip to the spiritual realm. Felt certainly lived through some time since Mistborn Era 1, but not necessarily too much time for a mortal. 

Good point he could have left right after we see him in Era 1. WAIT! How many worldhoppers look young because of time dilation instead of stuff like Hoid does?

7 minutes ago, Treamayne said:

He's also never mentioned as having accented Alethi

This is interesting... Adolin does not have a accent when Dalinar uses connection so he can speak Azish and neither does Nomad...

6 minutes ago, Treamayne said:

Rioting? Did you possibly mean A-Cadmium so he could pulse away some of those years?

I was meaning his interactions with others could be inflamed emotions. 

I feel that if he wasn't born with a metallic art he would get him self one because he can awaken (which is most often gained intentionally). But you're right about it being rare pre-catacandra, that's why I think he was born with one. Brandon seems to include this trust theme a bunch with Felt but I might just be looking for something that's not there.

14 minutes ago, AonSoo said:

Era 1 & 2 are hundreds of years apart scadrial time so time dilation wouldn't change anything.

Sorry, I was thinking large scale time dilation like on Roshar. It could be small scale but I find that unlikely.

1 hour ago, Treamayne said:

While I would not say this is impossible, I'm also not sure how he would have gotten a Bendalloy Spike to steal Spiritual Quadrant Feruchemy before the fall of The Lord Ruler. I guess it's possible that could have happened afterward, but that would not explain your portion of the theory about Elend. 

I also do not think that he is so much "a Ghostblood," as that the Rosharan Ghostbloods drafted him for the Lasting Integrity mission, and he complied out of respect for Kelsier (he doesn't really try to hide his disdain for Iyatil and Mraize). However, as you pointed out, he has been a trained spy for around 300 years, and he was very skilled even before worldhopping. We also know, via WoB, that he was part of the House Venture Shadesmar Economy before the fall of TLR (which means he was at least a bit Realmatically aware before Harmony ascended) and we know that he (likely) moved to Roshar for normal reason (not secret-society reason) which is part of why he continued to use his real name. 

We know he's smart and resourceful by how he discovers the broken grate in WoA, So, it's also possible he's just an affable person, skilled actor, etc.

WoBs:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

I'll admit, the Felt reveal in Interlude 1 was one of the parts of the book I hated. After the "moved to Texas" WoB, I felt that we had been lied to about Felt with this reveal, until I got to Ch 25 when it seems more apparent he was working with Mraize at-least grudgingly, if not coerced or forced somehow. Now I'm hoping for clarification (preferably by WoB, sooner than SA6)

WaT 

  Reveal hidden contents

I-5:

Ch 25:

 

 

You bring up great points. I do think he has some metallic arts though. A simpler explanation could be that he has A-Zinc.

2 minutes ago, Treamayne said:

It might change how many of those 300+ years he actually lived.

What do you mean?

1 minute ago, MagicMaggot said:

Not totally relevant, but do we actually know that he extended his life? I mean, there is also time dilation that could explain him still being around, isn't there?

Era 1 & 2 are hundreds of years apart scadrial time so time dilation wouldn't change anything.

Felt, a ghostblood that appears in mistborn and the stormlight archive, seems to have access to connection along with awakening (Awakening has been confirmed). This is because people seem to trust him a lot even if they have a reason not to. In mistborn he is a very effective spy for Straff and Elend uses him. He also was a trusted assistant of Dalinar's and Dalinar even reflects on how much he trusted Felt. Shallan never suspects him of being a spy on the trip to Lasting integrity. He was also a spy for Lyn. He kidnapped Felt and got information out of him. The copper mind says, "Despite the fact that Felt originally worked for his father, Elend respects him and his opinions." It also says, "It is not clear how Felt came to know Dalinar, but by 1168, he was one of the Blackthorn's most trusted associates. Like Elend, Dalinar respects Felt and seeks his counsel despite Felt's relatively low social status.^[1] Felt's skillset and personality have kept him close to Dalinar and his family, and he is considered a friend rather than just a subordinate. Adolin respects Felt in the same way that his father does.^[6]" Then in WaT Shallan decides to work with him even though he is a ghostblood. The easiest way to mess with connection is through feurochemy. As Felt doesn’t have the appearance of a terrace in mistborn, I find it more likely that he used feurochemy to get connection. I just want to know if anyone has thoughts on this and how likely or not you think it is.

I'm surprised he was planning this from WoK prime. It felt like a huge change to Renarin and Relains characters in WaT because there was almost nothing about it in earlier books but a large part of their POV's were about their feelings. When reading their POV's it kind of felt like a different character because all previous POV's were so different (that's not a bad thing though I would have liked this development to have come a little slower)

6 hours ago, Anttix said:

What I mean is that I'd really like to see a wilder range of utterances, expressions like "dun sphere of a man" "chull lover" "son of an axehound" or even "desolations" are just waiting to be used.

Or cremling brain, Blackbane breath or even Braize as a curse.

16 hours ago, TheoreticalMagic said:

I'm working on a theory that Autonomy created the Sleepless on whatever world they originated, and am trying to link up certain things we know about Autonomy's Investiture on Taldain. The nature of the Sleepless has always seemed to me to be an inverse of the Iriali, who seem to have some history with them....whereas the Iriali talk about people all being pieces of the One experiencing different things and bringing those different experiences back into the One, the Sleepless through their hive mind experience things as a singular entity even through their separate parts. So like, the parallels/overlaps are there, but they approach the concept of the-one-as-many in completely different ways.

I'm of the opinion that Adonalsium created the Iriali directly, or they're in some way tiny Splinters of him, and I think Autonomy....who likes to experience things and present herself in very different ways but without ever truly sacrificing her own autonomy or oversight of the self....I think she was intrigued by the concept of the Iriali and tried to create her own version of them. BUT because her mindset genuinely can't reconcile the idea of the One Prime Being of a collective giving up total control and agency and just....waiting on its various pieces to come back together....her version of this concept resulted in the Sleepless. Beings who experience life in a thousand different ways as part of a greater whole, without ever being truly separate from each other or at any point NOT still connected to the greater whole.

Anyway, the Sleepless also made me think of sand mastery, and the way its all about connecting millions of singular grains of sand into a collective unit directed by the will of the sand master, and I think similar principles are at work with the Sleepless and the way hordelings integrate and connect as part of their collective. Not to mention how Investiture is distributed on Dayside by a micro-organism in the lichen....aka a tiny organism integrating into a larger whole and spreading an ability to Connect small things into Larger Wholes in the process. I'm just trying to connect dots from how the lichen/micro-organisms conduct Investiture to link up individual sand particles to how individual hordelings might be similarly Connected through Investiture and I feel like there's a piece I'm still missing, but that's where my thoughts are at currently.

So yeah, my answer is its not just to do with the Dawnshards specifically and more to do with the nature of the Sleepless' innate Investiture. Based on cosmere timelines, I'd guess if Autonomy DID create the Sleepless, they would have to be among her first creations (or among the first creations of any Shards, likely), which would account for their greater knowledge of ancient matters like the use of the Dawnshards, back when those things were still relatively well known by the already cosmere-aware players. I suspect if she sent some Sleepless to Roshar way back in the early days, given that she and Tanavast seem unlikely to be friends or like-minded, she might have made a point to Invest her creations in some way that's deliberately resistant to Honor's power over bonds, because she didn't want his innate Connection to...well....Connection, to override the way SHE used Connection in the creation of her The-One-As-Many entities to keep each Sleepless as a singular collective, and so that would account for the way Surgebinders and even Heralds seem less than effective against them. Even Skybreakers using the Surge of Division. They were designed to be resistant to such forces in specific.

(Note: this doesn't mean I think the Sleepless we've met are actively agents of Autonomy...they wouldn't be the first to disagree with the designs or agendas of the Shard who first created them. And due to the nature of the Rosharan system and how the Shards within it are bound to it, it seems likely that Autonomy can't actively reach any Sleepless on Roshar and was reliant on them worldhopping off Roshar to have any influence over them again - at least, if she didn't want to alert Odium to their presence or her potential meddling. Which would mean the Sleepless on Roshar could have had a lot of time away from their creator's active influence to go rogue or develop their own agendas contrary to hers).

Love this theory. You bring up some great points. I've always thought that sleepless are from Taldain because they're so similar to Sandlings (see the second to last species) The interactions we see in Dawnshard are vaguely similar to other Autonomy created leaderships like the Taishin but also pretty different to others like the Set. This hive mind mentality in the Sleepless culture could be push back against the individualism Autonomy likes.

16 hours ago, TheoreticalMagic said:

Anyway, so yeah, I think the answer to OP's question is it was a combination of factors: the nature of the Sleepless and their own innate Investiture and not just the sheer overwhelming deluge of two Dawnshards coming together in the same place, but the fact that the two Dawnshards were Change and Exist specifically. Essentially, the Primal Commands best suited to turning something from what it is into something different, without negating what it is. So the Sleepless collapsed because the nature of the Dawnshards, plus their sheer power, combined to unintentionally effect change upon - or disrupt - the way the hordelings that comprise a Sleepless are Connected. 

This makes a lot of sense. Thanks.

12 hours ago, TheoreticalMagic said:

If the Iriali aren't of Adonalsium directly, I'd definitely agree with them being of Virtuosity. With her as thoroughly as Splintered as she seems to be, and given that the Returned are tiny Splinters of Endowment, it makes sense that a Shard who willingly Splintered herself past the point of having a core remaining centerpoint to her power/Intent could be the basis of an entire people. I do think the Iriali (and the Sleepless, who I believe only came to Roshar BECAUSE of the Iriali, perhaps the original Sleepless were following the Iriali Long Trail or watching them throughout their journey from world to world for whatever reason, hence both ending up in what became the Silver Kingdoms and having shared history) - anyway, I do think they've been on Roshar for a long time, thousands of years at least, but I do agree that there's a strong basis for the Iriali Long Trail not stretching back as far as the Shattering.

(Though....that doesn't necessarily mean that the Iriali and their original world couldn't have existed pre-Shattering. They could have been experiencing life as individuals on their homeworld for millennia before something forced an exodus from their original planet....such as one of the Shards taking an interest in them because of a suspected connection to Adonalsium. I think we're so used to associating the Iriali and worldhopping, its easy to conflate them as having ALWAYS existed as worldhoppers. Even the idea of them as Splinters or pieces of a Shard or Adonalsium himself doesn't inherently mean the Long Trail itself stretches back to their origins as a people. Something set the Long Trail in motion, and we have no idea what or when that was....it could just as easily have been five thousand years after the Shattering, with them having existed all that time on their original planet....or in Virtuosity's star system a thousand years before they came to Roshar, and mere centuries after Virtuosity Splintered).

All that said, I think a strong case could be made for matching the Iriali to Virtuosity and still being one of the more ancient cosmere cultures, albeit not as ancient as the Shattering itself. And Virtuosity - the Intent of artistry, which is born of and relates heavily to experience, identity and perspective - makes a lot of sense as the source of a nomadic people intent on experiencing life across the cosmere in whatever form. I believe there was even a WoB that talked about how before she Splintered herself, Virtuosity was known to travel throughout the cosmere observing and inspiring artistic expression across multiple worlds. The Iriali, then, would definitely be following in her footsteps in a lot of respects. 

(My original theory about the Iriali way back when was that they started out as golden counterparts to the Elantrians, Skai's Dominion based version of Aona's chosen devotees of scholarship, arts and culture, and intent on consolidating all peoples' of the cosmere as part of the One....their god, who they saw as having Dominion over all. Thus still making them one of the oldest cultures in the cosmere, and their Long Trail having begun when Odium killed Aona and Skai and shoved the remnants of Devotion and Dominion into the Cognitive Realm.

My initial suspicion was that they were originally on the level of Elantrian power, just geared towards Dominion pursuits, and so Autonomy swooped in trying to hijack the potentially deadliest army in the cosmere for herself, sparking the Iriali to set out on the Long Trail to stay out of her reach - and forgetting/disconnecting from their original region-based magics in the process, at the same time as their passed down religion moved away from Skai's original philosophy of conquest and forced consolidation under one rule and became what we know as the Iriali view of the One and the nature of life in the cosmere - as those who did fall into Autonomy's grasp became corrupted by her Investiture and turned into the much-feared men of red and gold, powered by magic similar in type and potency to Elantrian magics and that Autonomy hacked to be less region-dependent.

I've since moved away from this one as there's too much we still don't know about the timeline of Sel but the Elantris sequels might end up shifting me back in this direction, depending on what history we get about Elantris and if there are any hints of a pre-Fjordell society that potentially matched their power level as well).

Before WaT I had a theory about them being Selish beacause of their appearance and Iri & Ali sound like Aons. I like your ideas much better though. I do think it's quite possible that them and the sleepless predate the shattering. In my opinion The One seems like a religion not about a shard. In addition they seem decently Cosmere aware for a culture which may be because they might predate the shattering. The technological advancements seem to be limited as far as we've seen.

Also do you think that the Sleepless or Iriali would fight against a Autonomy-Retribution alliance? (Men of Gold and Red death rattles on scadrial is a  big reason I think this is likely) I think that most shards and definitely Scadrians and Rosharans would fight but the more neutral forces like the Sleepless or Iriali might not.

Hello there!

Who's a favorite character of yours that most people don't remember. (One for me would be Felt)

In the part where the two Dawnshards meet the sleepless in the room collapse into piles of hordelings. I just can't figure out if it was because of a physical force (like what Rysn was experiencing, but that was a pulling force), or was it because of a investiture force (what came to mind was that sleepless use investiture to stick together and the Dawnshards almost combining negated that power. Can anyone help me with this? I've researched but came up empty handed.

On 12/7/2024 at 8:25 AM, Inevitability said:

I genuinely hope this is the direction this is going 

I'm thinking Brandon's 2023 Q&A might have an answer possibly supporting this and other theories about the fourth moon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDm5Hif5rQo (Around 9:20)