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Awesome, thanks! I think Shai's Forgery lessons have taught us that no amount of "mental trickery" will make Investiture stick if the target's Identity doesn't accept it. You'll need to convince the soul first. It's kind of like Soulcasting, really. Pai (and perhaps other truly devout ardents) talk of transforming one's soul, which reminds me of the real life religious concept of metanoia. I think that's what the Radiant Ideals are for. I think when a Radiant speaks an Oath (or a Truth, if he's a Lightweaver), he is Soulcasting himself into something a little bit more receptive to Stormlight, like when a rough gemstone is cut and polished for better infusion. I think that at some point, when all his Ideals have been said, Kaladin will be able to hold Stormlight perfectly, as it will already become Innate to him.

I agree with PorridgeBrick that it is the Invested objects that consume Investiture, but perhaps it is their initial Investiture that is making them automatically consume more Investiture, like if it's part of their Intent or something. I'll get back to this later. I can't seem to find the WoB I saw that sort of suggested there's an alternative source of Investiture on Roshar, something connected to the black orb Gavilar gave Szeth. I'll edit this if I do find it. Anyway, if I'm not just hallucinating about that WoB, then maybe the Unmade prefer that source over Stormlight. My tentative theory is that the Unmade require access to the Voids, which might not be easy (if not impossible) to do via Stormlight, so they use some other source of Investiture (the spark of life? the Innate Investiture of humans?). I wonder if Nightblood, the Honorblades, and the Unmade are also in danger of losing their own Investiture unless they consume the Investiture of others, just like the Returned. If they are not in such danger, then their consumption is probably either an explicit part or a side-effect of the Intent of Investiture. If, however, they do lose Investiture on a regular basis, then I'd like to propose that non-Innate Investiture just naturally tends to dissipate from its host, and that these entities are simply replenishing their stores. I think an object's Cognitive aspect will have to accept the Investiture as part of its Identity (thus making it Innate Investiture) before it actually sticks for good. This seems consistent with everything we've seen so far, unless I'm missing something. For example, Nightblood is made of metal, which is not naturally receptive to Awakening (hence the number of Breaths required to Awaken metal), and so would never view Breaths as Innate.

I only skimmed through some parts and read the tl;dr version (I promise to read the whole thing carefully later) but I already gave you an upvote because of the cool interactive 3D graph, and because anyone who spends this much time writing a Cosmere theory deserves some sort of reward. Actually, that's two reasons to give you an upvote. Could someone please upvote Chaos again for me? Anyway, other people already gave in-depth commentary, so I'll just make one tiny observation We know that Adonalsium left some spren on Roshar, so they aren't something Honor/Cultivation invented. In fact, I rather suspect that any Shard attempting to Invest on Roshar will find that they can't do it without creating Splinters of themselves. I'm currently developing my own theory on how spren work, so I'll be able to talk more about this topic soon.

This is true. Remember, when you just burn Iron or Steel without Pushing or Pulling, all that happens is that you get to see the lines indicating where metal objects are. I have a question for the List: If "Stormlight patterns" cannot be seen by the naked eye (as Navani wrote in one of her illustrations), then how do artifabrians like her know about the patterns? Is there a device used to actually see such things?

Hi Hailey! Welcome to the 17th Shard! I hope you'll enjoy it here. If you want, you could chill out in the Community forums (there's some...interesting... role-playing games going on, as I'm sure you've noticed by now), or you could perhaps partake in some serious/not-so-serious Cosmere/Sanderson discussions. Lastly, there's a place where people plan for various Sanderson-related events. Call me weird, but think I really like Rushu. If I were transported to the Cosmere, I'd immediately go to Roshar, become an ardent, and find a way to be assigned to Navani's artifabrian team. Then while people around us worry about fighting Voidbringers and surviving the Everstorm, I'll take Rushu on an awesome journey towards the Reshi island where Geranid and Ashir live. Of course she'll say yes; she's obviously a Geranid fan. Then, once we're there, we'll just geek out on spren research and food science (I'll be Ashir's assistant), and live happily ever after... unless we get killed by Voidbringers or something. LOL. This is my fifth online forum in ten+ years and it's only now that I even care about rep points. Come to think of it, rep wasn't even that big of a deal here when I first joined last year. Not that I'm complaining. I love how generous the new guys are.

That would be freaky indeed. How would people react if the Stormlight pattern of a fabrial is actually a dead spren? Somebody tell Syl never to enter an infused gemstone, no matter how enticing it may be!

There's no such lack. Here's from Words of Radiance: More on that "switch" later. If one of the half-rubies experience enough infusion drain to crack it, the other half would experience the same infusion drain and should crack as well. You'll have to replace both of them. I suggest this could be done simply by putting the two metal settings of the old ruby halves onto a new (whole) ruby, infusing it, and then dividing it. No spren necessary. (Edit: You might think that old spanreed metal parts could simply be attached to separate whole rubies, but that won't work. The point of the spanreed fabrial is that its target (the gemstone itself) will behave in a cohesive manner even after dividing it. So if you use different gemstones, the effect won't manifest). I think you missed the point. The issue is why fabrials even need anything other than a gemstone in the first place. Why should there even be a setting? Why don't we ever see anyone simply press a piece of bare gemstone onto a target to activate it? If you're going to say that the metal part is used for mundane purposes, like allowing the user to wear the fabrial (as in the case of emotion bracelets and Soulcasters), then I'd like to point out just one example: Vstim's alerter fabrial, which just sits inside a wooden box (and sometimes on a wooden tripod), still has a metal framework attached to it. Speaking of Vstim's alerter, its metal framework apparently has dials that indicate which people to ignore: This is similar to how spanreeds have switches. Given that fabrials work via generation of specific Stormlight patterns, the only way those dials could possibly work is if changing the metal framework also affects the Stormlight pattern. Hence, it seems quite likely that the metal setting of a fabrial is somehow attuned to the Stormlight pattern.

What I described as "imprinting" and what Soulstamping is are similar in that they both tweak Identities, yes. The fabrial metal is not fully transformed as in Soulcasting, obviously, but its Identity is somehow forcefully attuned/shaped into the specific pattern of a spren. So when you remove the original gemstone and replace it with an infused spren-less gem, Stormlight will still align to that specific pattern, resonating with it as if the proper spren was there all along.

I guess we agree, then, that fabrials don't need spren as long as the necessary Stormlight pattern is already held in the metal. Or am I misunderstanding your reply?

Has anyone else noticed that every fabrial we've seen so far that has been sufficiently described was fixed in a metal setting of some sort? What I mean is that we've never seen a fabrial explicitly described as being without metal. It almost seems like metal was a requirement in fabrial creation, and not just for aesthetic purposes. In fact, in WoR, Shallan only realized that the lamps in the Stormseat Oathgate room were fabrials when she noticed the metallic latticework around each gemstone: But if metals are important in fabrial creation, what exactly is their purpose? Shouldn't a fabrial's power come directly from the spren and the Stormlight inside the gemstone? In a pre-WoR thread of mine, I theorized that metals were conduits/transmitters of Investiture, and were the reason why fabrials can actually change their environment. That might still be the case, but right now I'm not 100% convinced about it because that theory was based on metals having intrinsic Transportation Surge properties, which I now doubt. I have a new theory that doesn't require metals to transmit Investiture, but is still compatible with that idea. It first came to me when I noticed a problem with the Soulcaster fabrials. We know that these fabrials are special because all of them were made long ago, before the Recreance, when the Knights Radiant were still around. These Soulcasters, considered sacred by the ardents, have not yet been replicated in modern times. In other words, every single Soulcaster fabrial on Roshar are practically irreplaceable artifacts. The big problem with that is that gemstones crack when too much Stormlight is forced out of them. Or as Navani would say, they "succumb easily to the multiplied strain of simultaneous infusion drain and physical stress". And when that happens, you'll have to replace the broken gemstone. So if people saw me using a Soulcaster and one of its gemstones suddenly cracks, I'd probably look rather foolish to them, won't I? They'd think I had just destroyed something immensely precious, won't they? Well, apparently not. Jasnah didn't even pretend to be upset when the the smokestone in her (fake) fabrial cracked. It's as if she fully expected Shallan to believe the smokestone could simply be replaced. As for Shallan, she had serious problems with what Jasnah did, including using a holy artifact to commit murder, but not including irreplaceably breaking said artifact. I therefore conclude that while the gemstone component of a fabrial is obviously important (it holds the Stormlight that powers the fabrial), it can definitely be replaced, even that of a Soulcaster fabrial. But how could that be? Won't you need to trap the same kind of spren in another identically-cut gemstone to replicate the cracked gemstone's power (which in the case of Soulcasters, nobody has ever done successfully)? I don't think so. We know from one of Navani's illustrations that when a gemstone that has a spren trapped inside is infused with Stormlight, it creates a specific Stormlight pattern. Now, here is my theory: I think a fabrial's Stormlight pattern is somehow imprinted on the fabrial's metal setting. This allows for the gemstone to be replaced when needed without having to attract another spren in the replacement gemstone. That probably means replacement gemstones need not even contain any spren as long as the Stormlight pattern has already been imprinted in the metal. That also means the most important thing you could do to keep a fabrial working is to not mess with the metal framework because it might disturb the pattern imprinted on it. So you should, like, try not to accidentally damage it with a sword while attempting to stab your abusive father. Or something. What do you guys think? Edit: I believe this "imprinting" of a Stormlight pattern onto metal is made possible by the Cohesion Surge, but that probably deserves its own separate thread.

@Weiry: Yeah, that does help to see the individual diamonds better. *upvotes* I've seen that before when I was reading about Borromean rings. It's called a triquetra. Converting each leaf to a diamond creates a triangle symbol similar to the Triforce symbol in Zelda. As Chrono pointed out above, that is another possibility.

Here's the relevant Way of Kings excerpt from Chapter 74 ("Ghostblood"): Thanks for the upvotes and nice comments, guys! Attached is my terrible attempt at creating a vector version of this. It's my first time doing this kind of thing, and I've never even used Inkscape before, so pardon the imperfections. Hey, perhaps someone else might want to do a better job. Edit: Created a version that only has three normal diamonds instead of the three "hollow" diamonds. Which one do you guys think is the better Ghostblood symbol candidate? Edit: Added some colored versions.

From the Way of Kings, we know that the Ghostblood symbol is composed of three diamonds that overlap each other. In Words of Radiance, it is described as a triangle (I hope nobody considers that a spoiler). I tried looking for fanart depicting this, but all I can find is this (from the Stormlight Archive Wikia): I have two problems with this: First, the first diamond doesn't overlap with the third (breaking the "overlapping with each other" rule). Second, the symbol isn't at all triangular. Unless this was confirmed by Brandon to be accurate, I'm gonna have to conclude that this isn't the Ghostblood symbol. Earlier today it came to me that the symbol might be based on Borromean rings, three rings linked to each other. Googling for "Borromean diamonds" gave me this (from this page by an origami artist named Francis Ow): Now that's more like it! Just change the colors so that it looks sinister instead of girly and it would be perfect. Notice that the center is a hexagon, and six is the number Shash, the number of Blood. Also, the number three (three diamonds, and the vaguely triangular shape), Chach, is the number of Spark, the Essence of souls. Soul + Blood is... Ghostblood! What do you guys think? Is this similar to your conception of the Ghostblood symbol? I could try making my own (less bright and less pink) version of this, but I know quite a few Sharders who are very talented artistically. Any of you guys want to help? Edit: I just realized that "Borromean rings" is not strictly synonymous with interlocked rings. Borromean rings are arranged such that removing one ring results in two non-interlocked rings, whereas something like gimmal rings, for example, are strictly interlocked. The origami above isn't even Borromean; the creator calls them "interwoven diamonds". Forgive me for using the wrong terminology! *bows head in shame* Update: Here are some low-quality images I made of the pattern/symbol. Update: Brandon says my idea is not correct. Oh well.

That's okay. Part II is very likely going to be mostly wrong, but I still had fun writing it. I personally liked Part III the least, and I've been thinking of alternatives for it. Like, right now I'm looking for an explanation that somehow involves the Oathpact, but so far I've got nothing. Hey, here's some stuff from the books and from WoBs that sort of coincide with Part I (and some of Part II) of my theory: The two Essences I connected to the Transportation Surge (Zephyr and Blood) are also the Essences of winds and floods, aspects of storms that tend to displace stuff. Wind blows things away, water washes things away. The Stormfather himself talks of transportation (although in a rather morbid context): Wyndle (Radiant Essence: Lucentia) leaves behind trails of vines that crumble to dust, calling to mind the Surge of decay, Division, which I believe ought to be connected to Lucentia. Wyndle is some sort of artistic crystal gardener in Shadesmar. He is the only Knight Radiant spren we've met so far who has an obvious affinity to art. The Illumination Surge is supposed to be meant for artistic, creative people. How great would it be for artistic Illumination users to be bonded to an artistic spren like Wyndle! Both Shallan's broken Soulcaster and Jasnah's fake Soulcaster were supposed to be special types that could transform anything into anything else. Note that even though Jasnah's was fake, it must've looked like the real thing, or else Shallan wouldn't have bothered switching it with hers. Jasnah's Soulcaster had three gemstones: a smokestone, a ruby, and a diamond. Coincidentally, I gave the Surge of Tranformation to Spark (ruby) and Vapor (smokestone). Lucentia (diamond) is the other Essence adjacent to Spark, although why it would be needed in a "perfect" Soulcaster I'm not sure. Perhaps Lucentia (light) and Vapor (darkness) act as filters for Soulcasting. Transportation, also considered as the Surge of Realmatic Transition, can transport objects from one Realm to another. The bonded bodies of dead spren (i.e. Shardblades) can be forcefully summoned by performing a ritual involving heartbeats. The heart pumps Blood, the Essence that I've associated with Transportation. Notice also that summoned Shardblades appear with beads of water on them, another Blood association. Jasnah mentions the "eight kinds of blood" in her brief Soulcasting lecture in WoK. I've always wondered why there weren't ten kinds of blood, but with this theory, the eight kinds of blood might stand for the eight "normal" Essences. The name of the Ghostbloods connote two Essences. Blood is the obvious one, but there's also an Essence for ghosts, if by "ghost" we mean "soul". This is the Essence of Spark. In Tanavast's system, Blood is the Essence of Illumination-Transformation Surgebinders. But in my theoretical system, it's Spark. Coincidence? Cryptics are seen on Shadesmar as wearing robes that seem "too stiff to be cloth". This could be a reference to the Tension Surge, which Brandon describes as making soft things like cloth rigid, and which I associate with the Essence Blood. Shallan's Memory ability has been described as involving a sort of tension (Blood): Shin religion has peculiar tenets regarding stone, which the Shin regard as sacred. The Stone Shamans forbid treading on stone, for example. More importantly, they forbid breaking stone, such that they won't even use metal unless it was the product of Soulcasting (this is based on Thresh-son-Essan's words in WoK) rather than mining. Incidentally, talus is a form of broken stone, which is why I gave the Talus Essence the Surge of Division. Now here's some more circumstantial evidence from other Cosmere series (spoilered, of course):

Yes. For the sake of the others who might be curious, it's from this reddit IAMA thread: There are currently two manifestations of Rosharian Investiture that seem to rely on gemstone color: fabrials and Soulcasting. I bet there's more things reliant on gemstone colors than those two. Those are valid theories, Shaggai.

Thanks! Regarding the Lightborn weirdness, that's actually why I separated the theory into parts. Part I is supposed to be the part that makes most sense. People could espouse that without having to espouse the other weirder parts. They can even propose a different reason why the Surge arrangement was changed. In fact... yes, that's an awesome idea! I encourage you guys to propose alternatives to Parts II-IV. I want to see what your creative minds will come up with.That being said, while the idea that Stormlight passing through a prism will still exit as white light is definitely intriguing, I think it's simpler to assume it will divide into different colors. That is just my humble opinion. Edit: You do have a point about Surgebinders being able to use Stormlight from any gemstone, and that Stormlight leaking from Surgebinders seem white (except in Dalinar's visions, where Knights Radiant seem to glow with their Order's specific color). I'll have to think about this more.

I got that from the Coppermind, but let's see if I can give you a better source... Alright, here's from Chapter 10: So that's the source of the Coppermind article. I don't know if the word "Feruchemist" by itself still implies "full Feruchemist" in Wax-era Scadrial, but this post by Pinpoint last December implies that Wayne considers himself a Terrisman, and full Feruchemists are more likely to appear in Terris than anywhere else. That means there's a good possibility that his father was full Feruchemist. Alright, so I guess I'm not 100% sure. Does anyone have a relevant WoB or something? Googling got me nothing. No problem. Next time you accidentally post twice, you could hide one of your posts. The Hide button is located to the left of the MultiQuote button.

Vedel is the Herald of Lucentia, whose Honorblade has the Friction and Progression Surges, and whose Order is the Edgedancers. That's the thing, Tanavast gave her Friction and Progression, instead of the obvious Illumination (and the slightly less obvious Division). According to my theory, he did that to prevent Vedel (and the Edgedancers) from being what I termed "Lightborn". Here's one: Sweet, innit? Yes, the Polestones are the ten gemstones associated with the Essences. They can hold Stormlight, and they can also trap spren (a method used in fabrial creation).

I probably wasn't the one who got downvoted, but I'd like to commend you for such a charitable act. *upvotes* I think you misunderstood. The Ars Arcanum author thinks that the Body Focuses (e.g. inhalation, exhalation, soul, bone, hair, etc.) are mostly philosophical in nature. That means Pulp users (for example) won't necessarily use their hair, or Talus users their bones, to access Surgebinding powers. I get that, even though I shall note that inhalation, exhalation, and the eyes seem to be quite important in certain forms of Surgebinding. But that's beside the point. The Ars Arcanum author may not be omniscient (since he/she is just an in-world character), but we can assume that he/she is very knowledgeable. Because of this, I consciously did not mention the Body Focuses in Part I of my theory above (though I admit I did mention the Spark=soul association in the previous thread), but I did use some other philosophical associations, particularly Vapor symbolizing darkness. I think that's acceptable, though. The Ten Essences is a very abstract notion that very clearly lends itself to symbolism. In the case of Rosharian Investiture, this symbolism becomes more concrete due to the obvious significance of the gemstone symbolism, as well as the association with Soulcasting properties. In other words, the symbolism of the Essences is still important. That's why I found it very strange that certain Surges had no physical, cognitive, or spiritual association with their Essence. It just didn't feel like something Brandon would do. That's why I concluded that Surgebinding must have been tweaked somehow. Anyway, let me just summarize my theory in a single paragraph: I believe there is a natural order of Surge-pairs associated with each of the eight "normal" Essences (as I described in Part I). This is the arrangement that humans would have by default if Tanavast gave Surgebinding to them directly. Due to certain concerns regarding this natural order (particularly the possibility that Odium will get a hold of Illumination-Division users, who could access all the Surges), Tanavast created the Honorblades, which are Invested objects based on the Essences but contain "unnatural" Surge-pairs designed by Tanavast to balance the power of Surgebinding. This is the form of Surgebinding that was later adopted by the spren of the Knights Radiant. In other words, as I told Tempus and Khyrindor above, I don't really think the Surges have been messed with, just how Surgebinding is accessed. What Tanavast did was sort of a hack, a circumvention of Surgebinding, but he did not change the Surges themselves. I guess I should also mention that I think Adhesion and Progression are "God Surges" similar to the God Metals on Scadrial, and are therefore originally separate from "normal" Surgebinding. Thanks, it's not every day that someone acknowledges the hard work involved in writing these posts (even though I do write them for fun). I'm fine with you interpreting this as an interesting "What if". Still, the theory does predict some things. For example, if Lift (a Lucentia user who was experimented on by the Nightwatcher) was suddenly able to use a Surge other than Friction and Progression, then that's evidence that Lightborn can exist. Also, if the Voidbringers that will be created by the Everstorm exhibit more than two major Voidish powers, then we'll know that the major speculation I put in Appendix B is likely correct. Or, you know, we could just wait for Khyrindor to ask Brandon in August regarding this theory. The worst case scenario is that I'll have to abandon this theory in a few months. That's okay, though. I had fun writing it, anyway.

I just wanted to say that it's no surprise Wayne obtained some of the habits of full Feruchemists. His father was one, after all.

Hi. I was the unfortunate person who wrote that theory, earning the wrath of certain Sharders. I've since moved on to another God Metal theory. May I ask you opinion on that?

Appendix B: Cultivation, the Listeners, and Odium I've theorized before that Cultivation's magic system consisted of all the non-human forms of spren bonds. This includes animal-spren symbiosis, spren attraction to gemstones (which people have discovered and used for fabrial science), and the spren-bonding of the Listeners. Now, since there are ten Polestones, Cultivation obviously introduced the Essences of Sinew and Pulp into her system as well. That's why there are heliodor and emerald fabrials. But I think she limited the use of those Aether Essences, so the eight "normal Essences" probably dominates Cultivation's system I also think that Cultivation had help from Honor (they're romantic partners, after all); he contributed his bond-based Investiture to allow the creatures she was "cultivating" to bond with spren. Cultivation had absolutely no use for the Honorblades, so the Surges in her system are still attached to their "proper" Essences. I will have to make a separate thread about fabrials to elaborate more on this point, but for now let's move on to the Listeners. NutiketAiel posted a theory back in March that the ancestors of the Listeners inhabited Roshar before Honor and Cultivation arrived there. I think that's most likely the case. It would explain why the Stormfather calls them "the Ancient Ones". I believe the Ancient Ones were not bonded to any spren at all until that ability was given to them by Cultivation. They were basically in a spren-less form before Cultivation arrived, even though they were living with spren even before the Shattering of Adonalsium. But while the new spren bonds gave the Ancient Ones a way to interact with the Surges, it was only a one-way interaction. The Surges molded the Ancient Ones, but the Ancient Ones could not harness the Surges. This limitation is because Surgebinding was the power of Honor, not Cultivation, and Honor did not want to grant this power to the Ancient Ones for a very good reason... that I will get to later. When Honor opened up the door to Surgebinding for humans, the implications of this was not lost on the Ancient Ones. The humans were deemed worthy to control the Surges, but not they, the natives of this land, the ones closest to the spren. They felt insulted. Is it any surprise, then, that some of them turned to Odium when he arrived? I will discuss Odium's relationship with the Ancient Ones in another thread. Anyway, as I said earlier, Honor had a good reason not to allow the Ancient Ones to gain Surgebinding. It is because they were natives of Roshar, and therefore had a natural affinity to the Essence of Lucentia. They are the Listeners, after all, and sound is just another aspect of the Illumination Surge. This means every single Listener is a proto-Lightborn. Good thing Odium only gave the Listeners a corruption of Honor's system, eh? He seems unaware of the system that Honor replaced, the natural Surge-pairs of the Essences. Until now. The Stormform Parshendi in WoR did something that was never done before. They summoned a storm. I'm thinking that previous Stormform Voidbringers could only use the voidish forms of Adhesion and Gravitation (being the Voidish Windrunners), but what Eshonai and her army did looked very much like some evil form of the Transportation Surge. I think Eshonai's army may have been the very first Stormlord Voidbringers. Odium knows the secret now. The Everstorm has come. And through it, the Voidish versions of Division and Illumination shall be granted to the parshmen in the final transformation they will ever need. Each Voidbringer the Everstorm makes shall wield all ten Voids.

I also agree that the ancestors of Parshendi were likely on Roshar already when Honor and Cultivation arrived. This is probably why the Stormfather calls the Listeners "the Ancient Ones". Good theory, NutiketAiel! I agree with almost all of what you said above, Moogle, except for the bit in red. From the Chicago signing last March, we know that ten is definitely not, definitely not, definitely not, definitely not the number of Unmade: This makes me wonder whether the Ten Fools refer to actual beings, or if they're simply Vorin myth.

Yes, Lift is one of the main characters of the second story arc, so she definitely has a big part to play. Also, I do think that a Bondsmith like Dalinar would be the perfect replacement for Tanavast. Looks like a plan. Good luck!