Isomere

I'm still a fan of the improbability drive for ftl.

Just swap who is using the plate, still belongs to the king but his bodyguards all take turns. That's what I'd do at least.

I like how Ivory has oil based visual clues, confirming in my mind order 7. The black base and sheen of colors that swirl on his skin reminds me of an oil spill on water or soap bubbles. In terms of humanity's betrayal, I bet they killed the parshmen's spren to enslave them, and that led the directly to the Recreance. Hard to know which of those the spren would resent more.

I think a spren did write it, but used Dalinar's hand for the dirty work. There is some evidence that a combination of splinter/cognitive entity can possess people, and I suspect Voidbringers are not the only things capable of doing it. Overall I lean towards a spren of the almighty using Dalinar's body for a time to get the message through. I also love the idea of bond smiths receiving revelation, given the association with piety, guidance, and the location of Ishi's glyph (it is centered on the forehead of the spirit-head in the KR chart, a common symbol of True Sight and prescience)

We belive light should act following certain rules, but it doesnt always work out. Gamma rays are just high energy light, but don't reflect off mirrors, and rather than warming things up they can instead trigger nuclear fission, or even produce antimatter. Microwaves simply never do those things. That said, all light has a wavelength, frequency, and total energy that follow strict rules. I'm suggesting that investiture could have radically different end effects depending on the type, even if it is all the same stuff. That said, I do think immortality fits as a universal effect of investiture simply because all the shareholders are still alive

Up vote just for Hoid being "cryptic"

That artist story is the cultural explanation of why Vorin safehands are covered, but that doesn't rule out a pre-existing influence from this image or something related.

You have a good analogy. Somehow it is possible to claim the whole sphere where the water collects, and that is different than just drinking all the water that has collected. Both are considered ascension. I notice that Sazed picked up something when Ati and Vin died, and that something was very different from what Rashek claimed in the well of ascension: Sazed picked up the shard itself, while TLR just picked up a lot of the shard's temporary power reserve. I'd like to know more a out how they inter-relate, and there are questions about external energy. In your example there is gravity to help the water seep back into the sphere. In the water-wheel example there is solar powered evaporation and condensation, but in the shard there is apparently no external source? The power just slowly reappears for free? So many unknowns. Just because you can fuel all the magics with any form of investiture doesn't mean they are exactly the same. Red light is not the same as green light, and microwaves don't behave like gamma rays. Similarly, I anticipate each shard's investiture could have its own unique flavor of rules and rewards.

Thanks for the links, I like to have the original source to add to my collection of bookmarks. Also please note, taking the power of the well grants ascension, but does not make you a permanent shard. The power is used and you become a sliver. I suspect Brandon is saying if you gather enough Lerasium you could ascend temporarily, and then become a sliver after the Lerasium is burned up.

I would also love to know more about this. I've mused that someone destroyed the physical and cognitive form of Adonalsium, but wasn't able to destroy the spiritual. Pure speculation though. I also suspect that there may be more impact between the realms than we recognize. Spren are mostly cog/spirit, but they DO manifest some physical traits. We also have WOB that all things exist in all three realms, but that doesn't rule out realmatic imbalances. (ie, an object with too little physical substance to support the spiritual body it is linked to)

Can you please link that WOB swimmingly?

My thoughts on sound as the focus of Roshar come from this thread: The Focus on Roshar Basically, I'm suggesting that stormlight (like the mists of Scadrial) allows us to bypass the focus similar to how Elend used Allomancy with no metals to burn. There is good evidence that sound has been used as a focus for magics on Roshar. Consider the dawnsingers, Dawnchant, the Dawncities, the Vanrial, the Parshendi song, the Eternal Words, etc. There is evidence that soulcasting creates an associated sound, but unless the casting is very dramatic the sound is not audible. One example where the sound did occur is when Jasnah removes the stone debris for Taravangian. “And then, briefly, Shallan heard a sound. A low thrumming, like a distant group of voices, humming together a single, pure note. Jasnah’s hand sank into the rock. The stone vanished.” (From chapter 5). Humming can also make it easier to Soulcast (Ch 42). Other examples of sound include the heartbeat for summoning a shardblade, the verbal request for a boon from the Old Magic, and the rhythm of battle with the thrill. Shallan's drawings also apparently uses rhythm, and have ties to cultivation and soul-sprouts: “When she collected a Memory of a person, she was snipping free a bud of their soul, and she cultivated and grew it on the page. Charcoal for sinew, paper pulp for bone, ink for blood, the paper’s texture for skin. She fell into a rhythm, a cadence, the scratching of her pencil like the sound of breathing from those she depicted.”(from Chapter 7)

Very intriguing theory. Not sure I'm satisfied on the specifics, but i think sufficiently concentrated investiture could be the key to immortality. Lots of discussion about Radiants not aging. I think it's possible, but they may not have enough investiture for that. Perhaps they live a few extra decades like awakeners of second heightening? Also, Radiants have at least three sources of investiture: innate, spren bond, and stormlight. The spren bond may contribute a great deal of investiture, perhaps even more than the maximum saturation of Stormlight.

Hey Aiobheann, since you gave such a good invitation here is a shameless plug for a couple theories I am fond of that compare the two groups of chart symbols. Cultivation's corruption The Tanavallah Others noticed the asymmetry before me, I first saw it through the image below.

No confirmation that Honor was splintered after the Recreance, the theory is just based on Tanavast saying he was alive for most of the visions he recorded. Since Tanavast may have recorded the visions after the splintering it leaves us with virtually no idea about timecourse.

Perhaps the little spheres in Shadesmar only matter in terms of content, not relative position. You could build a city out of them by changing relative position, but you don't actually change the traits and attributes of the individual spheres.

The mists, Lerasium, Atium, stormlight etc. are not what I consider unbound investiture. All things exist in all three realms, and those are the physical realm manifestation of a shard, literally their physical body. Just as I claim my own hand to be bound to me, so too is the mist bound to Harmony. In terms of Splinter definition, I'm still in favor of the thresholds theory: unbound investiture can't gain sentience unless it has a certain minimum quantity. Once that quantity is attained it will develop sentience, but only in the cognitive realm unless it is also bound to a person via Soul-bond.

I think honor used sound waves to power his magic system.

I just think its all stormlight and there is no inherited light eye changes with blades or radianthood. If the radiant has enough stormlight his eyes glow, if the light runs out the eyes stop glowing and revert to their original color. That explains why Taln has dark eyes. Feed him some stormlight and i bet we will see those eyes change to amber glowies.

Dang I need to type faster. My edit above was to avoid double posting. So aluminum is confirmed to destroy itself. Perhaps all the metals are transmuted to something allomantically inert?

I believe Soul-stamps in TES directly alter the Spiritweb and result in transmutation. From what I can gather, Spiritweb just refers to the spiritual connections all things have to various Spiritual Ideals. A carpenter crafts a jewelry box: now it has spiritual links to the ideals of wood, box, jewels, wealth, etc. sum up all those connections and you have a Spiritweb. Sever the tie to wood and create a spiritual link to silver and in twixt you have a silver jewelry box. Lerasium is able to rewrite sDNA, which I believe alters the spiritweb to create a perfect connection to Preservation. I'm suggesting a similar mechanism for aluminum, but instead of altering a human soul you alter the Spiritweb of the metals. I also think both Lerasium and aluminum have a default pattern for the spiritweb alterations, but if the user is skilled he can chose a different pattern. Default pattern for Lerasium connects to Preservation and makes allomancers, but could it potentially allow access to other Shardic magic systems? Aluminum makes your reserves disappear, but we are not sure what happens to them. They could be destroyed, but they could also be transmuted. Also, are we sure burning aluminum destroys itself? I seem to remember a hint that you can continue burning duralumin after one reserve has been powerburned, seems possible aluminum can do something similar.

Tanavast never calls himself the Almighty. He said the Rosharans called him that, but since they use the word wrong that doesn't mean much.

I see this correlate to spanreed Fabrials. A big and small ruby would both do the same thing, but one works from a much greater distance. With Hoids tiny Element perhaps he can do the same types of things as Adonalsium could, but just with less total investiture in play which may create limitations.

I agree with this theory, I think Aluminum changes the Spiritweb of the metals, and converts them all to aluminum. I also suspect with sufficient skill you can use aluminum to transmute any allomantic alloy. I rant a bit, but suggest something similar here

Brandon also says that Hoid is using the Lerasium in a very different way than we would assume. Theories I've heard include Hemalurgy spike, metalmind, complete sDNA rewrite (allowing him to use all magic systems), chunk of Adonalsium and various combinations of these. If the Lerasium is now part of a new alloy, it would still satisfy the paraphrased WOB above, so we can't yet rule out a melding of Lerasium and its correlate from each shard.