CtrlAltDepressed

I subscribe to the death of Adolin for a couple main reasons. I think its a given that one of the main / mainish characters is going to die this book. Not only is it Brandons style, it seems to fit the overall theme of the story. The most Honorable thing someone can do is give their life for a greater good. In no particular order: -I would cry if Kaladin is the one who dies -I dont think Kaladin will die realistically because that would be a terrible ending to his arc in my opinion -Adolin has been sad about his lack of usefullness / power for some time now -What better way to be useful than to sacrifice yourself Deus Ex Machina style to save the day or allow someone else to save the day -He has been set up as the greatest dueler on Roshar, making his first loss that much harder / shocking -He is personally important to pretty much every main character and his death could be the final motivation for them to complete their character arcs / progress through more oaths -He is Kaladins best friend now, and is constantly pulling Kaladin out of his funk -He is Dalinars son, obvious connection there -He is Renarins brother, obvious connection there -He is Jasnah's cousin, though this one is the weakest simply due to Jasnahs personality -He is Shallans husband, and she is quite the mess. The loss of Adolin could be too much for her to relegate to a personality, forcing her to accept and process grief on her own, again allowing her to progress through the oaths. -He has set himself up as a champion of the deadeyes. I believe if he is going to die it will be in an act to restore Maya / all of the deadeyes.

I had heard the same things as you about Elantris, and for that reason I put off reading it for a long time. Boy was that a mistake. I got around to reading it recently and I liked it a lot more than I liked any of the books in MB Era 2. I still loved MB Era 2 but Elantris was great for me for a couple reasons: -The intrigue. There are a lot of questions that you ask very early in the book and you get answers to pretty much all of them by the end. In fact 9/10 of these answers are subtly written into the story before they are explicitly stated. -Unpredictably predictable. Going through the story, you have a pretty good idea of where the end of the book is going to end up. But HOW you get there has some curveballs. Which leads to a simultaneous "I KNEW IT" and "OHHHHHHH Why didnt i see that before" moment which is really fun. -The characters. For the most part their decisions and motivations seem genuine / not contrived and I relate to a lot of them personally (even some of the bad guys). This is something I was missing from MB Era 2. The bad guys there felt way more objectively evil than the bad guys in Elantris. -The magic. AonDor is just really really cool and a story that slightly revolves around AonDor is very interesting. -The Sanderstorm. I wont get too much into this but the ending is really good in my opinion. The crescendo builds slowly but surely and the payoff is huge. There were at least 5 moments while reading Elantris that I was blown away by the skill Brandon shows in pulling the pieces of this story together. Again, I love MB Era 2, but I didn't feel that way for Era 2.

The creation of Lerasium and Atium through Trellium must be a spiritual aspect of this reaction with the separation of axi representing the physical reaction. These are two distinct things here I think. Which is why only trace amounts were produced. Dropping one Shard does not mean he would drop the Shard 'Harmony'. He would drop Ruin and Preservation in one package. We call the entanglement of Preservation and Ruin Harmony but Harmony is not a new Shard. You are contradicting yourself in the first sentence so this really seems like a 'so the story can happen' kind of thing. The two above quotes seem to contradict each other. Either Ruin / Preservation exists or they don't - they currently do so Harmony cannot be a new shard. There is not a new Intent here. There are two opposite Intents that are (trying to be) harmonious. The Honor is not two smaller shards example is perfect for this actually. Im going to use Odium because its easier for me to get two smaller intents from that. Odium could be Passion and Wrath (as an example) however the Shard Odium is not currently made of two intents. It is one intent - Odium. To my knowledge Odium could not choose to only put forth the Passion part of his Investiture or just the Wrath part, as Harmony is doing with Preservation and Ruin. Passion and Wrath do not exist because they are aspects of Odium just like you say Preservation and Ruin need to be gone. This is a direct contradiction. Either Harmony is fully combined and is actually a new Shard - meaning he can no longer send Pres / Ruin separately - or he is not and Harmonium is not actually a new God metal. It is a spiritual intertwining - but not combination - of Preservation and Ruin. I just really don't see how you can have a grey area on wether this is a new shard or not. Obviously Ruin and Preservation are intertwined but what I have been getting at is that this must be distinctly different from them actually being Combined into a new shard. I was trying to use what we know about the Tones to figure out more things about Harmony's nature. The fact that you can use the previous tones to manipulate Harmony's investiture is part of the proof to me that Harmony is NOT a new Shard and Harmonium is NOT a new God metal. Harmony is very akin to the Dor. The intertwining of two Shards Intents creates a new thing, but that doesn't mean that the Dor is a new separate Intent that is the true combination of Devotion and Dominion. It is a spiritual averaging it seems like. There are still separately seons of devotion and skaze of dominion.

I did not mean just the electric current alone. I did not explain it well at all but I meant that if you passed an electric current through the harmonium and then sang the pure tones of preservation / ruin could you separate out the Lerasium and Atium similar to how Navani is able to move the lights around with the tones. The electric current makes the harmonium more like Lerasium and Atium on either side which kind of has to be spiritual mumbo jumbo since it isn't an alloy, which has led me to think there might be other ways to separate it other than a Trellium / Harmonium explosion. I think our misalignment here is that I think the pure tone of a shard is independent of the vessel that holds it. Leras and Tanavast have been dead for a very long time but the pure tone of Honor or Preservation have not changed. When Vin / Kelsier / Lord Ruler / Sazed ascended I would think it would be mentioned if the tone had changed. Again I did not explain well at all but I was referencing the Harmonium / water reaction. In that reaction the water is the catalyst for the Lerasium and Atium destroying each other. They react with the water to corrode into Harmonium hydroxide. Something that corrodes in the air and has an extremely violent reaction in water does not seem like a true God Metal. I'm proposing that it is a spiritual intermingling of Lerasium and Atium. Yes the god metal is filtered through the vessel, but clearly that is not an issue here because we already know of a method to extract Lerasium and Atium from Harmonium. Which is more than likely due to Sazed's personal knowledge of both vessels, but that doesn't really matter here. If it was a new God metal you should not be able to extract the previous vessels god metal from it. Coppermind: Due to the merging of Ruin and Preservation's intents into Harmony, harmonium's Spiritual aspect is in opposition with itself, leading to effects on the metal's Physical aspect, which makes it extremely reactive.[6][7] It reacts violently with water, similar to alkali metals. After reacting with water, residual harmonium hydroxide is left behind, though the substance's properties are unknown.[8] The Southern Scadrians use harmonium to create powerful bombs,[9] which the Set have been trying to replicate with limited success.[10] Harmonium corrodes and can react strongly in contact with the air; in order to prevent this, it is stored within oil So where is the new Harmonium coming from? Coppermind: Storing too much harmonium in one place supposedly can lead to the production of a perpendicularity I had imagined this perpendicularity as being created by a massive vein of Harmonium, which is where the malwish have been extracting it.

I believe I inferred it from this passage. ROW CH 76 I see what you mean about Towerlight and therefore Warlight not being a pure tone because it is two tones. It isn't just the tones of the two shards though, and this has me wondering if someone took up Cultivation and Honor in the same manner Sazed did, would they produce a the Towerlight godmetal equivalent to Harmonium? Seems Harmonium is not a new god metal at all technically (spiritually?) - its a spiritual meshing of Lerasium and Atium and that spiritual meshing creates physical changes. Doesn't this also mean that you could extract Lerasium and Atium from Harmonium using the electrical current Wax shows and the pure tones of Preservation and Ruin? Why do the Lerasium and Atium in Harmonium annihilate each other in such a violent reaction when Navani's experiments show Stormlight and Voidlight not blowing up on contact? It required the anti-tone for that. This must be a spiritual intertwining in a similar manner as Harmony right? Is this implying there is something anti-tone related happening to Harmony? That doesn't seem right. We haven't seen Harmony's perpendicularity, doesn't this mean that it would be as violent as Harmonium? I think im missing details this is not adding up for me.

Warlight is a combination of the Rhythms of Odium and Honor but is still its own separate pure tone. Raboniel tells us that the Rhythm of War is a pure tone, so I have to disagree on this point. I understood it that the resonating frequencies of Odiums tone and Honors tone creates / exposes a new pure tone. If the Rhythm of War was simply a combination of the two other rhythms, then the Rhythm of War should manipulate both stormlight and voidlight - and to my knowledge it does not. What my post was getting at is there is an inconsistency here with Harmony. The properties of Harmonium make it seems like the shards are joined together as one since it is not an alloy. However, the separation of the mists is proof that Harmony is as you said "Vessel to two Shards with opposing Intents that he tries to balance" Navani could have found the Rhythm of War without using the other tones. It would have been extremely difficult but once it is discovered, Raboniel remarks something along the lines of 'i never heard it before but that rhythm was always here' showing that it is not a product of Odium / Honors tone, those tones just helped reveal it.

Hello! I've been thinking about the Pure Tones and I have a lot of questions. So in ROW we see that using the pure tone of Honor, you get a reaction from Honor's investiture with the same holding true for Odium and Cultivation. We also see that when you combine stormlight and voidlight into warlight, that combining the tones of Honor and Odium allows you to manipulate warlight. After Harmony's ascension, there are two mists on Scadrial - one for Pres and one for Ruin. However, Harmonium is NOT an alloy of Atium and Lerasium. This seems to be a contradiction. Wouldn't we expect there to be one type of Harmony mist? Do the preservation mists still respond to the tone of preservation and vise versa for the ruin mists? I cant imagine why they wouldn't since the mists are not Harmony - they are pres / ruin. If there is a Harmony tone, I wouldnt expect that one tone to effect Preservation and Ruin investiture in the same way I wouldn't expect the rhythm of war to manipulate both voidlight and stormlight. If we take that one step further - you should be able to separate Harmonium into Lerasium and Atium using the pure tones of Preservation and Ruin. It seems like this is what the Trellium spike was doing. Using the tone of Pres/Ruin pulls the investiture towards the source, however Trellium's tone pushes away all other investiture, which is why it produced Lerasium and Atium even though Harmonium is not an alloy. We have this WOB that leaves the tone of Harmony in obscurity for the time being. I think there being two mists and what we know about the tones from ROW that it is clear that Harmony does not have a pure tone. It is possible for Harmony to have a pure tone, but preservation and ruin are not resonating how we see in ROW with warlight. If Harmony had a pure tone, the tones of Preservation and Ruin should be 'gone' and all of their investiture should become Harmonys investiture. But it didnt - it stayed seperate. I know that part of this might be because the shards of Harmony are in such disagreement with each other, but im proposing that this problem is deeper. Odium and Honor are quite opposite Intents (thought not as fully), yet they can still be harmonized (hah) into a pure tone. What do you all think? Is Harmony how we expect shard combinations to go? What ive discussed above makes me think that the shards are not actually joined. Sazed is a vessel holding two shards instead of a vessel holding two harmonized shards which would function as one shard. Yes, their investiture is very tangled and would be very very hard to seperate, but I think thats just the point. The investitures are tangled, and not joined.

Im fairly certain there is a WOB that you could manipulate the mists on Scadrial with the pure tone of Preservation. I will look for it an edit it in if i find it. There is this one: Menderbug Is the Well's pulsing a 'pure tone of Scadrial'? Brandon Sanderson Yup! Miscellaneous 2020 (Nov. 30, 2020) and this one MoriWillow Is that tone and rhythm stuff universal to the Shards and Investiture elsewhere? Brandon Sanderson The tones can be expanded to other Shards and Invested Arts around the cosmere. dIvorrap Are the Allomantic pulses a Seeker hears (like drum beats) related to the tones of Preservation, then? Brandon Sanderson Yes, they are. General Reddit 2020 (Nov. 22, 2020) From these WOB's I would assume that you will get a response from Metallic Arts provided you are using the right tone.

I certainly think that is Hoids goal or tangentially his goal. I think we will learn a lot about Ado and the shattering eventually, however I don't think the climax of the story or any of the story really will be focused on Ado reforming or anything like that. We know that Ado created the Cosmere so this story is ultimately what happens when God (god? who knows! ) is killed, and fallible mortals are left to control that power. There's also the numbers part of it all. There are 16 shards. Currently at least 5 of them are splintered. There are at least 5 that we have virtually no information on at the moment. This is not even to mention the aethers. I don't think that some of those shards will be seen in major effect for a long time and that there won't really be a final storyline or real conclusion. The Cosmere is a big place with a lot of different peoples. All these missing shards leave areas for Brandon to tell new stories. For example, there are hints of a Scadrian / Rosharan conflict. I really dont see that conflict being resolved by the combination of all those shards. It will be a generation spanning ill-will with different resolutions and conflicts at different points in history. Potentially even a uniting against a more Cosmere wide threat, that type of thing.

This doesn't need to be limited to Hemalurgy either. You could have metalmind chips that grant feruchemical / allomantic abilities and / or feruchemical batteries that are devoid of Identity. A standardized form of education where every citizen is given a coppermind full of the information they need. I'm imagining Gladiator style games where both contestants are given the medallions needed to compound gold and then fight to the (near) death. Seems like we could be wrapping back around to the situation in era 1. Those who are wealthy enough to buy the abilities they want will be able to control the common folk and become a quasi-nobility. Normal Scadrians would be selling their extra innate Preservation for use in spikes, similar to how Nalthians sell their breath for exorbitant amounts (or are pressured).

Agreed - she is unmaking lesser spren. The unmaking process seems to be an additive process, rather than subtraction / rearranging. When we see Raboniel unmaking the Sibling she is only adding Odiums Investiture to the spren, which would ultimately warp the very essence (personality, disposition, memories) of the creature. As a rephrasing of what others have said, Sja-Anat is not able to produce / add enough of Odiums Investiture to corrupt something bigger than an Oathgate spren. Its possible that what Raboniel did had subtle effects on the Siblings personality but is not nearly enough to call her unmade.

I think that the physical pieces of Harmonium that exists would stay as Harmonium, but any new God Metal Produced at the perpendicularity would be Discordium and would presumably have different properties. There is an argument to be made that he is already Discord and is denying it to himself / resisting the truth. I think some evidence of this can be seen through the properties of Harmonium. You wouldn't think that the god metal of Harmony would be the most destructive substance we've seen to date, in addition to being virtually unusable in all of the metallic arts. I think the perpendicularity would stay where it is unless he decided to move it, which is certainly possible with a drastic shift in Intent.

I disagree. It is told to us that a Dawnshard was involved in the destruction of Ashyn. Ishar on his own is not powerful enough to destroy Roshar.

per the wobs provided, I think this would work. it would be a lot of setup but it seems totally plausible to me. Taking this to the extreme, if you simply tied 10 ropes together at the ends, awaken them as one rope, and visualize unwrapping themselves as part of the command, you could have 10 awakened objects for the cost of one (even if you unwrap them yourself). Or, to an even more extreme, if you had a cloth like silk with extremely strong single strands, could you have it split itself into its individual strands and have hundreds of individual objects? I think the only limiter there is the command and with someone like Vasher I dont think that would be an issue. example: 'split into equal parts and grab things'

Then could a Radiant heal the holes in their spiritweb from hemalurgic spikes? I feel like stormlight healing and feruchemical gold healing are the same basic healing mechanism, which I don't think heals hemalurgic holes. There is probably a wob on the matter

Thank you for finding the quote! Now that I see the text again, I'm not sure this is conclusive on what is happening here. It seems like what this could be saying is that the motions before he cut it COULD be dismissed as the wind (but not to Kaladin), and that the shifting in the breeze was actual shifting in the breeze. This is indicated by the fact that anyone else would believe the entire thing was the wind. A piece of cloth that vaguely resembled a person came at him, was quickly cut in two, and then was shifting in the breeze. This doesn't seem to indicate to me that the cloth was still wriggling after being cut. I think, especially because he notes how weird the first part is, that the cloth is not moving on its own after he cuts it. Having been on Roshar in the past and having been there a good bit now already, I think its safe to assume Vasher knows what would happen to his breath when a shardblade cuts the cloth. Since Vasher is on Roshar for the free investiture it seems unlikely that he would waste any amount of breath for this interaction with Kaladin (assuming that cutting it degrades or removes part of the breath). I think there might be a power gap here if the cloth is still trying to enact its command. Does that mean that, with the right type of cloth, Vasher's awakened cloth 'soldiers' basically just become two smaller 'soldiers' when cut? Its kind of like a hydra, growing more heads the more you cut. I'm still not sold either way. Since you mentioned that shardblades have to vaporize SOME material to do what they do, it occurred to me that healing shardblade wounds as a Radiant might not be an infinitely repeatable process. What I mean is the stormlight can repair your soul, but that part that was vaporized cant be regained. I dont know how many times it would take but I think you could degrade someones soul a LOT doing this. I imagine it would happen pretty quickly, actually.

Is this wriggling a death throe or the cloth trying to continue its command? I don't remember this quote exactly.... We could say 10 breaths and its split into 5 / 5 or 4.5 / 4.5. I just picked 1 because its easy, not that it would actually only have 1 breath. Does that mean Kaladin lost part of his soul when his arm was cut by a blade? I was under the impression shardblades just cut the soul, they dont actually excise any of it.

That is why i specified 1 breath for the cloth because OB spoilers:

This thread got me thinking about the interaction between shardblades and awakened objects. We know that shardblades cut the soul and not living flesh, and we know that breath create an artificial soul for the object. If a shardblade cuts a piece of awakened cloth, what happens? I can forsee a LOT of possibilities, some more likely than others. For the sake of argument the cloth was awakened with 1 breath. cloth is not cut, just like a person, and the breath connection is severed breath is recoverable because shardblades dont destroy investiture breath is not recoverable because the connection to the awakener has been severed (breath without permission?) cloth is cut into two pieces with half a breath in each follows the command just as two pieces breaks command because identity of cloth is now different cloths 'soul' is cut, so half of the cloth cant act on the command, but the breath stays and it tries its best to complete the command What do you all think? Given the scene we have from vasher using awakening when training kaladin, I think its possible to see this interaction, and potentially even likely.

Im not sure what of this is spoilers so im going to tag it to be safe

I would love this, however Brandon has been pretty strict about Ado details being delayed for Dragonsteel. Perhaps this is a little teaser for that, but I don't think he will break that rule. I hope he does though haha

EXCUSE ME SIRE WHAT which god could this be?? Of the dead ones we know about currently, I think Ambition is the most likely to cause issues in Shadesmar, and it would be really cool to see more on that shard (like other than on threnody). It could be a misdirect, but the fact that it says god singular leads me to believe it is not referencing the Dor. In addition I think Brandon would wait for the Elantris sequels to change stuff with the Dor. It could be one of the shards we haven't seen yet, but that would be really sad for me - if the last two shards we've seen are already shattered (Virtuosity + this one). Im struggling to think of any other dead shard could reasonably have an effect on this story, and im coming up short. Thoughts??

No, this was an assumption on my part. I think I presented my line of thinking going the wrong way. my chain of assumptions: Perpendicularity is from the aether presence > Perpendicularity is gone now > Core aether dying caused perp to disappear > ALSO resulted in Aditil's personal aether dying I was not assuming that the worlds aether is dead because Aditils is dead, more that I assume Aditils is dead because the worlds aether was killed. Agreed - though I assumed those events are related. Inhospitable for aetherbound - do you mean that the aethers can no longer survive but their hosts can? Or is Aditil going into danger shes not aware of? These are the same 12 core aethers, no? My understanding of Lumar is that these are the same 12 core aethers, but they are unconnected to the hive mind. Like the pink crystal in Tress is the same as TwinSoul's pink crystal, just unconnected to Silajana. What I meant by mostly physical: Aethers are a physical thing with a Spiritual component, while Shards are Spiritual things with physical components. If there was a venn diagram of physical vs spiritual investiture aethers would be on the physical side and shards on the spiritual, but theres obviously going to be some overlap there. We have been told that physically in the spiritual realm all of the shards are pushing up against each other, so im not sure how the aethers could have their own section of that. What I imagined with them up against each other is like if you put water balloons into a bucket. They fill every available spiritual location, but are still seperate. (Now that I think about it Aethers dont have to be Spiritual at all. Their distance connection could easily be explained as a cognitive Connection instead of Spiritual. I think they are spiritual in some aspects but I realized they dont have to be. ) Right, but those effects are spiritual effects bleeding through to the physical. Threnody in particular is a spiritual disease / corruption that has a physical representation (shades), but still represents a spiritual phenomenon. Sel is slightly different but is still not a physical thing. Its a cognitive event that has effects on the physical. In contrast, the Aethers seem to be physical events that have spiritual effects. I wouldn't say that a splintering is actually killing the Shard. The vessel, absolutely, but the Shard itself cannot actually be destroyed. Yes, I know, Investiture cannot be created or destroyed, but if we look past the pedanticness, things can absolutely be destroyed. Yes, there is still a spiritual imprint of Teft, but by my definition Teft was destroyed. Especially since there is a wob (that i cant find) that states that once someone's soul has reached the beyond they cannot ever be brought back from that. Which is pretty definitively destroying Teft. The energy that made up Teft is still there but that isn't Teft any more than the Stormlight in a gem is Teft. Honor is dead - completely splintered. However, Stormlight still powers Surgebinding. This is what I was getting at with shards dying not removing the magic system. In addition, that Stormlight is still restricted by Honor's intent - even though the Shard is 'dead'. My assumption with Aditil is that her aether died because the worlds aether died, not that she made a personal choice that resulted in the death. If it was her decision that resulted in its death, then yes, it is basically the same thing as the Radiant bond - loss of powers. However if her aether died because her worlds aether died, then that absolutely points to the Aethers being much less powerful than a Shard. Honors death did not break the Radiants bonds - they had to choose that themselves. I am also very interested in what happens with a dead Aether. Would it look for a new hive mind? Or would killing Silajana kill the entire aether? Its interesting that the Shards are referred to in their 'formal' name (Endowment, Honor, Odium, etc) vs their personal name (Edgli, Tanavast, Rayse) while the Aethers are almost exclusively referred to in their personal name (Silajana). Im not sure what that means but its interesting.

Hello friends WARNING: FULL COSMERE SPOILERS AHEAD Following the reading of the newest secret project, there's one question that (currently) is the most exciting to me personally. There USED to be a perpendicularity on Dhatri. This has so many implications. I'm just going to go through my thought process, please tell me where your opinion differs or alternative theories. The first question here is, does that mean a shard was in residence on Dhatri? I think not. I think this is evidence that a significant aether presence can create a perpendicularity just like any other massive amount of pooled investiture, and that a shard was not in residence here. If we follow that assumption, the next logical assumption is that the aether is dead - especially since we see that Aditil's aether is dead. I think this is implying that the aether was eradicated on Dhatri, and that it happened fairly recently (since it is clear Aditil's aether was not always dead). This is huge to me. In my head, this is definitive proof that the aethers are not anywhere close to as powerful as even one shard. A vessel can be killed, and a shard splintered, but that does not completely negate the magic system as the Dhatri scenario is presenting. A shard could never be fully destroyed like this, and its quite shocking that it can happen to the aether if all of my assumptions are correct. This would indicate that the aethers are mostly physical while shards are mostly spiritual. What I mean by that is shards cannot ever be truly destroyed because they exist in the spiritual realm, where time and space are one. However, for the aether to be destroyed they must persist as a physical thing, rather than a physical manifestation of something spiritual (like god metals). Thoughts?