Isomere

Brandon has told us some things about them here: The larkin in the Rysn interlude readings from WoR seem remarkably similar and may be the Reshi equivalent of these Aimian beasts. We don't know for sure how they relate to the KR. My personal theory is they are the Roshar equivalent of Atium and Lerasium based on this quote

The venn diagram question was very specific: "Neither is standing close enough to the other to be within the other's bubble." If they are outside each other's bubbles, the overlap regions will be like a Venn diagram. If they are within each other's bubbles I'd assume they completely cancel out and nothing happens.

The human attribute "health" has never been quantified in terms of absolute energy. It's possible there is a tremendous amount of power absorbed when you store health in a metalmind, enough to create matter from scratch.

I've never heard that theory, and I quite like it. I personally believe the Almighty to be the union of Honor and Cultivation as represented by the two pupils of the dual eye, with the heralds forming an important role but outside the central iris. This may have changed dramatically when honor was fragmented and perhaps the term evolved to become what you are suggesting.

I'd recommend a dab of caution with some of the assumptions we are making about the Oathpact. The heralds were part of it, but Odium may not have been voluntarily involved. Is there any solid evidence that Honor or Cultivation were part of the Oathpact? I think it was formed after Honor came to Roshar, but I don't know of any proof of that. I suspect the rules that govern Shardic Avatars are much bigger than the Oathpact and apply to all 16 Shards. Think about the champions in Hero of Ages. All told, we just know so little about this stuff that it makes theories hard to reinforce.

I've been theorizing here that cultivation has been corrupted by Odium. The odd blend of granting a request mixed with a curse doesn't really seem to fit with our concept of cultivation, but if you add a bit of spite I think it makes more sense.

The ecological impact is likely to cause trouble, but I'm also by interested in the metaphysical impact. Consider this quote. This seems to be suggesting a Shard is tied up with the Greatshells somehow, and I'm worried that killing them off will weaken Cultivation or the remnants of Honor.

Stormcraft RTS: The Parshendi and Alethi races battle to the death trying to secure valuable Gemhearts. Meanwhile, the Shin play Hay-day and wait for someone to invade them and take their resources. Also featuring a Reshi beach volleyball tournament where clothes are optional.

Hey Miyabi, thanks for the input. I’ve got lots to think about from your post. One of the core concepts of this theory is that all the magic systems on all the worlds are just the same Power being used by different Shards. If that premise is right then the surges should bear some resemblance to the magics on Scadrial, but interpreted by the Almighty instead of Harmony. You mentioned the natural forces of gravity, pressure, atomic force and electromagnetism. I haven’t been trying to keep them as distinct powers, but more as foundations for some of the surges. Light and darkness both deal with electromagnetic radiation, and enhancing memory/perception could be accomplished by manipulating the electric potentials in the brain. Transformation fits nicely under atomic forces since you need to change the atomic structure to transmute one element to another. Gravity and pressure we have seen well demonstrated with Kaladin and Szeth. I bounced back and forth several times on how to group pressure and gravity, and my initial post had gravity shared with Nan. I ended up switching because of the Ars Arcanum table. The Body Focus of Jes is inhalation and fits nicely with gravity. Nan is Exhalation which fits nicely with pressure. Also, you can create fog by creating a pressure gradient in humidified air. As for Skybreakers, perhaps they flew through the air using gravity and then attacked with superhuman strength to break their foes into tiny bits. I imagine a Dalinar shaped meteor trailed by stormlight launching into the ranks of Voidbringers followed by an impact crater of flying bodies. There are a few views on the transportation surge and most lump it into orders 5 or 9. - Jasnah is able to soulcast at a distance, which supposedly is impossible. Many have suggested she has access to the transportation surge which lets her get around that limitation. - A stoneward managed to sneak up behind Dalinar during one of his Visions. This could be hinting at a teleportation ability. For now I am in the Jasnah camp. There are a hundred and one ways someone can sneak up on Dalinar, but not as many explanations for soulcasting from 5 paces. I love your theory that she used light beams to transport the soulcasting. During other reads it just seemed the stormlight was visible as it traveled to the thugs, but perhaps there is more to it. I’ve currently put the Light surge between orders 3 and 4. Spark and lucentia both deal with light, and the eyes as a body focus seems to support it. I’m assuming order 4 is Lightweavers and 3 is something that melts rocks (Embersoul or Fireheart or somesuch). Could you tell me where cold is associated with Topaz or Heliador? I must have missed that reference. I definitely could get behind surge 3 being cold. I talked about creating fog using pressure, but you can also make fog by cooling down warm humidified air. However, smoke seems to be better represented by darkness since it can be hot enough to char the lining of your lungs.

Count me in. Free books are always nice

When you say "shard" do you mean a set of magic plate armor and blade, or a type of permanent investiture? I really like the idea that Heralds have a huge chunk of power from the Almighty, and previously posted this thread wondering if Dawnshards are actually SHARDS. I'm still a supporter of the idea that the dawn shards are a type of permanent Investiture, but some of the quotes in that thread raise questions. Summarized: the Heralds are not Slivers, have never held the power of an entire shard and may have existed before the Almighty was splintered. That leaves me to speculate they hold some form of power greater than a splinter but smaller than a shard.

I have still not decided if Odium was a voluntary participant in the Oathpact. Most of the speculation includes him, but I can also see a different scenario. The Heralds could have discovered a way to trap Odium, but it required an eternal commitment to maintain the prison. They swore an oath to be forever vigilant and keep Odium bound, but this exposed them to Odium's whims and they caved under millennia of torture.

If it's possible for an elantrian to create a portal to shadesmar, a stamp could potentially replicate the effect. Just find a suitable Stonehenge archway with the right history...

As far as I am aware we don't know the nature of Adonalsium's shattering. My personal thoughts are equal amounts of investiture in each shard, but there is no solid evidence for that.

I suspect Honor and Cultivation poured their investiture into spren from each of the 10 basic elements. Once altered they became Honorspren or Cultivationspren depending on who put in the most investiture, but they should still retain some of the fundamental aspects of their original form.

I believe this is because the spren they have bonded have more investiture from Cultivation and less from Honor compared with Syl. Other traits such as creativity and wisdom will strengthen their spren-bonds instead of the Honor traits Kaladin and Dalinar show.

Simultaneity is relative from what I have studied. Take the thought experiment of a car trying to fit in a garage that's one foot too short. If you accelerate the car to relativistic speeds then you can make it shrink by a foot. Open both front and back doors of the garage then have the car race through at near-light speed. When it is completely inside the garage you simultaneously snap both doors closed and for a brief moment the car fits. Then the doors open and the car drives out the other side. Now the same scene from the perspective of the driver. For him, the garage is racing towards him at near light speeds and is even shorter than before he accelerated. He gets the front of his car into the garage and is certain it won't fit. The back door flickers closed just as his front bumper is about to touch it. The back door opens and he drives through the garage, then the front door closes just after his back bumper clears the entrance. They all get together after the experiment and start yelling about who won the bet that the car would fit completely inside the garage. So the question is, did both doors close at the same time? Unfortunately, it depends on your frame of reference.

I just want the powers of whatever shattered Adonalsium.

There are a few references to possession in the books. Unfortunately, all of them are based on legends from long ago and may have been distorted by time. This quote from Dalinar is fairly straight forward about possession, but it doesn't specify if the Voidbringers are dead spirits. We only get that by cross referencing with Elantris. Hrathen reveals that Svrakiss are dead souls that can possess people. He claims that when he looked into Dilaf's eyes he found a Svrakiss looking back at him. Since they both are connected with possessing other people and both related to planets Odium has invaded in force, I'm speculating that the Voidbringers and the Svrakiss are the same thing. Regardless, there is precedence for possession on both planets.

I have been wondering for a long time just what has become of Cultivation and I've come up with a new theory for us to sink our teeth into. In the Tanavallah I claim this image represents Odium's magic system. There are many aspects of the picture that lead me to that conclusion, and I'll summarize the main points to support that. The real goal though is to discuss the parts of the image that don't fit with Odium and to follow those down the rabbit hole. The symbols of fire and shadow are everywhere, including the outstretched arms of the woman, the swirling flames on top and the ribbons of darkness on bottom, the fireballs in all four corners, the lightning bolts and shadow bolts between Voids and Orders, and the dramatic contrast between red shard and swirling darkness. These all point to Odium since his minions are invariably described with fire and shadow. The Void Glyphs are another hint. They are formed by partially inverting the Surge Glyphs from the Knights Radiant Table which ruins the perfect symmetry. Violating symmetry fits with Odium upsetting the balance created by the Almighty. Also, the inversion may represent negative interference in the Surge itself. We know the power of creation is a wave with pulse length and frequency. If you hit this wave with its inversion the two would obliterate each other similar to noise cancellation headphones. But instead of destroying sound this unravels creation itself, leaving nothing but an empty Void. Now to the parts that don't fit with Odium. Instead of Honorblades, all of the Orders are represented by different animals. The red one in the bottom right is a crab. The red one on the left has six legs and bunny ears. The green one in the middle is almost certainly a lurg. The purple one on the left has horns. Each of them is either a whole body picture or a face depicting an animal. Using living creatures as your Order icons just doesn't strike me as very Odious. Another big problem I see is gender. We know from Hoids Letter that Rayse is a man, yet the only person in this chart is female. That seems incongruous. Why would a chart designed to represent a man have four images of the same woman? A third point against Odium is location. The adjacent image is a map of Shadesmar, with the same woman motif surrounding it. We know Odium is on Braise, a different planet in the Roshar system. Why then is the chart linked to Shadesmar? This suggests that something other than Odium is being referenced. Many people believe that the chart is about Cultivation's magic system. That provides a nice parallel, with Honor linked to the physical world and Cultivation linked to Shadesmar. The animals fit as her symbols, and the female motif makes more sense if it is representing Cultivation. Unfortunately, if this is Cultivation's chart then the fire and shadow references and the glyph asymmetry are terribly out of place. So how do we reconcile these seeming contradictions? Lets take a closer look at the woman depicted here. When I first studied her I saw the right hand representing fire and left representing shadow, both symbols of Odium. But now I see something else. The entire image is a mixed message, combining symbols of both Odium and Cultivation. Perhaps the right hand represents cultivation in her natural state, and the shadowed left hand represents some imprint of Odium. There is evidence both on Roshar and Sel that odium can command dead souls to possess humans and force them to do evil acts. Is it possible this was done with the holder of a Shard? It would explain why the chart for Cultivation's magic would be so dark and foreboding, and reconcile the symbols of odium that pervade the image. There are many many places where cultivation could be, but I'd like to add "possessed by evil spirits and fighting for control of her shard while hiding in Shadesmar". EDIT: Renamed the thread and added spoiler warning.

I have been watching carefully for proof that shattering must kill the person holding a shard. I haven't found any. In "the letter" Hoid mentioned that Devotion and Dominion were splintered, then clarified that the holders were dead. Now it's possible that he is just a big fan of redundancy, but the way it is worded hints that you can splinter a shard but leave the holder alive afterward. Based on the prologue of WOK it seems Odium ended up "bound" on Roshar. This imprisonment prevented him from his goal of shattering both Honor and Cultivation and killing their holders. He managed to splinter Honor, but did he kill Tanavast at the same time? Brandon has said that the holder of Cultivation is still alive. My personal theory is that Honor was splintered before the first Desolation, but Tanavast died much later.

Bear in mind this theory is still in infancy and will need more info before it can really be fleshed out. I'm just pointing out some similar legends on two planets where odium has come in force. These stories claim the evil spirits of dead people can possess living bodies. I can see Odium using this as a loop hole so he could avoid binding himself to a planet, but still have the souls of previously invested thralls go there and possess people to continue his Odious work.

But that begs the question of how Hoid managed to get on Sel so he could supply illegal weapons to the Elantrians. If it is not possible to travel through Shadesmar ...

I smell (odium ) at work in the earthquake. Dilaf was called a svrakiss by Hrathen and I'm tempted to agree with him. Something not from Sel has possessed the body of this Dakhor monk. Something that fosters hate and thrives on suffering. Something that has a deep understanding of the nature of the forces at work post splintering, and the savvy to harness those forces to destroy a civilization devoted to peace and harmony. EDIT: Spoiler whiteout added.

I'm truly liking nord's theory about wave interactions canceling each other out. In fact, I'm quite jealous that he thought of it without any contribution from the waveform conspiracist. I've got some posts running around that suggest the power of creation is itself a waveform. If the two time bubbles are both created by manipulating a waveform-based magic it seems perfectly reasonable that the areas of overlap would simply create negative interference and perfectly cancel out. My Tanavallah theory uses this same principle to explain voidbinding. Thought experiment inside the spoiler that doesn't really relate to this thread, but includes decapitation and suspended droplets of blood: The main idea of this thread though is how the power of creation would react to being used in a pocket of altered time. Subjective burn rates is a reasonable way to work this out and Kurk lays out some mind bending possibilities. However, I suspect the Power of Creation shares some attributes with light, namely that it exists outside of time. If this is the case, time bubbles do not affect the power of creation since it occupies all time frames simultaneously. Rather than have the inside bubble burn with respect to the outside bubble's time frame I suspect that both of them would burn with respect to the absolute reference frame of the Power of Creation itself, then merge into a single unified bubble that either cancels out or amplifies.