Slayd_07

Do we know that when they were used they were used as a whole, not as four individual Commands? I guess the assumption I was making was that the name Dawnshards was incorrectly likening them to the Shards because of a misunderstanding of their nature. Yeah, I meant more that they aren't derived from Ado like the Shards are, they at least existed at the same time. So they definitely weren't going to reform Ado or something like that.

The Dawnshards meeting and trying to fuse in W&T was extremely unexpected, to say the least. Nothing we knew about the Dawnshards indicated that they would behave like that upon meeting - they predate the Shattering, so it can't be related to Adonalsium, and they've always seemed like distinct objects, not parts of a greater whole. What are your theories on why they're trying to pull together, and what it might result in if they were allowed to?

Yeah, if Taravangian doesn't act carefully to ensure Honor is happy, he could easily end up in a situation like Tanavast did towards the end, where the power was rebelling against him. And if that happens he just kind of looses. The only way he even has a chance in this cosmere-wide war is by holding a dual Shard.

It was explicitly stated that T'Odium could destroy Kharbranth because it had been given to him in the contract Taravangian formed with Rayse. That ownership was maintained by the power, even after the Vessel transfer. And Scadrial did belong, at least partially, to Ruin - there were even lines, I believe, from Ruin about how since he helped create Scadrial, he was within his rights to destroy it. Gavinor absolutely counts as being "fully given" to him. If being his champion doesn't fufill that, I don't know what does. I'm confident that this "only affect those who are fully given to you" pact was something that happened at the Shattering. It's the only reasonable explanation, since we've seen basically every Shard follow these rules across the breadth of the Cosmere.

Hoid opened himself up to this kind of direct attack when he intervened in Kaladin's vision in RoW. Other than that, Retribution still follows the normal rule of Shards where he can't be too direct in his attacks on anyone who doesn't fully "belong" to him.

It's generally the opposite in the cosmere - black is generally the colour of corrupted investiture. (Think Nightblood, the darkness in Yumi, etc.) Besides that, I think this theory relies on some misconceptions about Death Rattles. Sure, flame isn't the best metaphor to describe the appearence of the Parshendi - but it's how a human, on their deathbed, being shown a vision of the future they can barely understand would probably describe them. This is the second problem I have. The speaker is hard to define. I think the speaker is pretty easy to define. This is probably a human perspective, after the invasion of Roshar and the expellation of the Parsh to Braize. Like you said, the "they shall burn, as we once did" refers to how the humans were burned and soot-stained as they left Ashyn. I believe there have been plenty of references to Damnation as being burning or warm - while the description of it in the Sunlit Man is probably technically correct, I think that's not common knowledge on Roshar.

So, the Wind was being suppressed somehow by Rayse, but since Taravangian took the Shard, he hasn't been paying attention to her. I'm guessing this is similar to how we saw Shards work in Mistborn - the power might hold a tremendous wealth of knowledge, but the Vessel needs to know what to look for to extract that information. Taravangian hasn't looked into these primordial spren, so he hasn't "learned" about the Wind from the Shard yet.

It's tragic, really. But in all seriousness, I bet Hoid hasn't progressed far enough in his Lightweaver oaths yet to allow Design to have more of a personality. We saw with Syl especially, she self-actualized a lot more as Kaladin progressed through his first few oaths - and Sanderson has said that the Lightweaver oaths are going to be genuinely difficult for Hoid to move through, there are a lot of truths he's denying.

Ooh, good catch! I think this likely means that the Shard is no longer bound by that promise, since the other person within the contract broke it.

Yeah, having somebody who made a binding promise with the Shard later pick up the Shard is weird. Although, it's possible that Taravangian could break that agreement with little to no consequence now, since him "breaking" the agreement would be more like both parties mutually agreeing to terminate their contract. The other thing to note here is the Taravangian-picks-up-odium plot twist was something that Sanderson came up with while writing RoW, so he may not necessarily have planned for Taravangian's deal to be relevant in that aspect.

Oh damn, that's a good catch! This TOTALLY sounds like Iyatil tapping a little bit of speed.

Yeah, I think these three are red herrings. It would just be such a heel turn for any of them to turn to Odium's side, and I think Odium manipulating a child into becoming his champion would violate the agreement - I don't think your champion can be "willing" if they don't fully grasp what they're agreeing to.

I've always said that I would fall in with the Ghostbloods IMMEDIATELY if I was on Roshar or Scadrial - really, I think most of us would. What are we here on the forums for if not to puzzle out all these little secrets ourselves?

My best guess for why Mraize collapsed the perpendicularity is such - If it doesn't suck everybody into it like other people in thread have suggested, Dalinar/Navani will still have to open another perpendicularity to get out - I think Mraize is hoping to escape and get a run on that perpendicularity, counting on the chaos and unpredictability of it's appearance to let him slip past the Radiants.

At this point, I think we can pretty much say for sure that something happened between Tanavast/Honor/Nohadan. The epigraph where he talks about leaving them to their own devices so they can grow and learn independent of him? That sounds EXACTLY like some of the stuff Harmony talked about in TLM. Honestly though, I have no idea what the details could be. Nohadan referring to his readers as "dear readers" was also quite funny, that is NOT what I expected the tone of The Way of Kings to be.

Something to keep in mind is that right now, the Ghostbloods have been facing some POWERFUL opposition. Their opponents are third or fourth oath Radiants, monarchs, and even Hoid himself is pretty directly opposing them. Plus, because of their nature as a secret organization, we likely only see the plans of theirs that go awry. I mean, just in the last couple chapters, we've found out that they placed an informant in the coalition's inner circle, AND stolen anti-stormlight from Urithiru. That's pretty impressive!

They've got to be the remaining Heralds, right? Since Jezerin is Dead dead now, there's only 9 of them left.

Exactly! Plus, we've seen repeatedly that the Ghostbloods are powerful because they have an incredible amount of knowledge about realmatics and the cosmere, not because of extreme martial prowess. In TLM, the agents they have on hand are probably some of the best they have - the Ghostbloods are more focused on protecting Scadrial than anywhere else - and they're still only decently powerful on the scale of the Cosmere. There was never an implication that the Ghostbloods had heavy-hitting Investiture users that could compete with a 4th-oath Radiant.

Where do we see Odium create a body for a Fused directly? It seems to me like they always possess singers - the Fused seem pretty used to the process in RoW.

Ahh, that's a good point that the Tone of Honor would have changed. And yeah, that's a really long time between Nohadon living and Honor starting to act weird. That pretty much invalidates this theory in my mind. Oh well, having a theory conclusively disproven isn't the worst thing in the world - at least we know for sure that we can cross this option off the list. I certainly can't think of anything to refute these points.

This seems a bit less plausible to me, this is incredibly early in the timeline. As far as I remember, people didn't notice Honor starting to act weird until close to the Recreance, but the Odium/Honor worship swap happened all the way before the Desolations were even a thing. In fact, I bet the Honor/Odium swap happened before Nohadan was even alive - he was a king in one of the Silver Kingdoms, right? And those weren't established until humans invaded the rest of Roshar which happened after they started worshipping Honor. Another relevant piece of info I noticed is Hoid's conversation with Dalinar earlier in the book - the one where he mentions Vin's partial ascension. (I couldn't seem to find the quote for this, if somebody else dropped it in below this I would appreciate it.) Hoid says that it's incredibly difficult to give up the power of a Shard, and he's never heard of it being done before - except for in Vin's case. I don't think this really shoots holes in this theory, but it is something to consider. It means Hoid is unaware of the swap having happened, which is certainly interesting. For something that significant to have slipped under Hoid's radar means that the swap must have been incredibly secretive.

I'm pretty sure the bolt did have a Raysium tip. The Ghostbloods probably scrounged it from fallen Fused in Urithiru. And to their credit, it was absolutely a valuable use of Raysium. Getting hit by that completely disabled Shallan, and probably would for any Radiant. (Though not someone who can use Voidlight to power their abilities! I think I'm beginning to see why getting Renarin in on Shallan's mission is a good idea!)

I think's it's probably for safety, since they were handling anti-Stormlight.

Yeah this sure sounds applicable to me. Lines up pretty perfectly - there sure are many who would denounce Tanavast for stepping away. The second line is really interesting from a Shardic perspective, too. I can see how though it might seem like weakness to abdicate from a Shard, say you can't hold it anymore - that takes a strength we haven't seen from any other Vessel. No one else has even come close to peacefully leaving their Shard to another.

I can certainly see how Tanavast, a Vessel, stepping down and passing the Shard to someone who proved woefully unable to wield it would shame the Stormfather in such a major way. Or even better - you're right that the Stormfather has Nohadan's cognative shadow instead of Tanavast's, and it's specifically Nohadan's shame that he failed to wield Honor so disastrously.