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In the Way of Kings, we first see a glimpse of Shadesmar when Shallan accidentally discovers it after giving a Cryptic (Pattern, I'm sure) a truth about herself. We see that there are bizarre floating flames in the part of Shadesmar where Shallan landed. Then, in Words of Radiance, we finally learn what those flames are supposed to be: So those flames supposedly represent the minds of living things. I shall henceforth call them "Mind flames". Anyway, when I first read that, I remembered a particularly exciting scene from the Way of Kings involving Jasnah and Soulcasting: (A sidenote: Why did the second footpad's clothing get transformed along with him, while the clothing of the last two remained untouched? I have no idea.) Anyway, I thought to myself: If living things were represented as flames in Shadesmar, does that mean Jasnah had to touch those Shadesmar flames in order to transform the first two footpads? That's some pretty cool imagery right there: Jasnah getting hold of the floating flame of her enemy's mind, casually ignoring the heat, and then sending Stormlight to it to turn her enemy into quartz. But there's a problem with that scenario: People who die have their "Mind flames" snuffed out. Here's a scene from Word of Radiance: The problem here is that a corpse is a non-living thing, and therefore should exist as a glass Identity bead in Shadesmar. If the Mind flame is the thing targeted when Soulcasting a living person, then that mind-flame should transform into a sphere upon that person's death, not vanish as described in that excerpt. So, it seems that the Mind flame is not simply a living thing's version of a dead thing's Identity bead. I now think that each person should have both a Mind flame and an Identity bead on Shadesmar, two distinct Cognitive objects. This duality reminds me of Hesina's little lecture in the Way of Kings: I guess Hesina's "soul" terminology might refer to the Mind flame, while the "very small" spren refers to the Identity beads of each body part (or even each cell). There has to be one Identity bead that represents the whole body, though. I think that Identity bead was the thing Jasnah targeted during that fight with the footpads, not the Mind flame. Even if my theory (that a person has both a Mind flame and an Identity bead on Shadesmar) is correct, I still wonder if there are Surgebinders who can affect Mind flames. Dustbringers have the Essence of Spark, but they're not known to visit Shadesmar, so I don't think they'll be able to do this. Since fire is a form of light energy, I feel that Lightweavers should be able to affect Mind flames somehow. Lightweavers are also adept at changing people's minds, so that fits with the idea of manipulating a representation of a mind. Perhaps Shallan should experiment with using the Illumination Surge on one of those when she next visits Shadesmar? As for Elsecallers, perhaps they can somehow access their own Mind flame in Shadesmar and do funky Elsecaller-y things with it. I'm a bit too sleepy to ponder on specific theoretical scenarios, though. How about you guys? What do you think?

In Way of Kings, we learn (also from Kaladin) that garnet marks are called bloodmarks. I guess (as Sphinx said) lighteyes like Shallan have a different view of what kind of wage can be considered a "pittance".

Just for the benefit of others (since you might have seen it already), here's the Coppermind article on Rosharian currency. I think we can safely assume that firemarks are ruby marks since ruby is the gemstone for the Spark Essence. According to the article, that's 50 diamond chips to a firemark. Shallan's slaves are paid an equivalent of 300 diamond chips a week (or 50 diamond chips plus 250 more reserved for paying their slave debt), whereas bridgemen are only paid an equivalent of 50 diamond chips in a week (2 clearmarks a day, with five diamond chips to a clearmark and five days in a week).

The theory list was made by Tempus. I guess you could post your request in his Theory Index thread so that he will see it. That would be this, wherein I realized that I wasn't the first to come up with the Aluminum Identity = Gold Shadows theory. Also, apparently you mentioned Malatium in the very same post that I replied to days before I wrote my Malatium/Aluminum Twinborn theory. I remember coming up with my Malatium theory after pondering about why Vin couldn't touch Rashek's Malatium shadows, but it's very possible that your post was also a (subconscious) factor. Edit: Fixed link.

Nooo!!! I'll get you for this, Catquisitor! Seriously, Kurk is the best.

I can't wait for Shallan to realize that *everything* is a waveform and therefore subject to the Illumination Surge. Well, it's not as if the Transformation Surge isn't equally universally applicable.

Isomere came up with the waveform focus theory last year. He later revised it to make sound the only focus. Given that the Illumination Surge manipulates all sorts of waveforms, I guess his original theory was closer to the truth, although I believe waveforms are just one aspect of the actual focus. As for Jasnah neglecting the visual arts' role in scholarship, I say that's not unreasonable even from a mundane standpoint. It would not be embarrassing for a scholar to hire someone else to make illustrations for a book she has written. But if an artistic scholar wrote a song, it would not be a good sign if someone else had to compose the music for it. Also, why would you delve into the field of music theory if you had no skill in performing music? (I mean, you could, but it would be harder to gain a good reputation that way.) (Edit: I misinterpreted the original post. I now hide this shameful act in spoiler tags.) Lastly, Jasnah did later acknowledge the value of the visual arts when she made Shallan copy a chasmfiend-like "Voidbringer" illustration for Dalinar. I don't think Jasnah's the kind of person who'd give such an off-hand praise just like that. She didn't have to mention it at all. It seems to me that Jasnah was proud of her ward's skill with the visual arts.

I could just imagine Shallan talking to a chunk of metallic rock. "Become atium." "I am a rock." Ugh! Not this again! "Atium is a type of rock. Just focus on ruinous thoughts, okay? Be one with Ruin!" "I am a rock." "Storm it!" *kicks rock* *rock becomes angry* "I am... RAYSIUM!" "Wha..." (Note: I don't actually believe that raysium or any other God Metal can be made this way.) *** Kidding aside, now I'm eager to see Shallan trying to Soulcast an Invested object into something else. She'll fail, of course, but I bet the resulting conversation will have Stick levels of awesomeness.

Upvote to Moogle for providing empirical validation for my long-held love for spoilers. As for Kobold King's question, if there was a theory that I hated, and if I was confident it was incorrect, and then it turned out it was correct, then I can imagine how I'd be a bit pissed. (I've yet to see a theory I actually hated, though.) Otherwise, well, I don't really see why I shouldn't be happy that a theory was proven correct. I sort of see the whole Cosmere as a puzzle that we, as die-hard Sanderson fans, can try to solve before Brandon gives us the answers. Why? Because the pieces are already there, or at least some of them are. One could just sit back and wait for all the pieces to come together, I guess. That's perfectly fine, but it's not for me. I enjoy puzzles too much.

The boy was Iriali. I also thought the "One" was Adonalsium at first. It's still possible. I'm just offering an alternative idea. None taken. It is admittedly a pretty wild idea. When we learned that Shardblades actually were spren and that Parshendi really could hear Rhythms that allowed them to synchronize their chants, I wasn't disappointed at all that I had those ideas in advance. In fact I was giddy with delight! Of course, the original theory posts that contained those ideas were mostly wrong, anyway (especially the Shardblade one, where I said that Shardblades were Odiumspren; boy was that post full of wrong speculations!), but I was happy to get at least a few things right. Here, I took a pretty simple idea (that Ym's "One" is a Shard) and went wild with it, proposing a hypothetical outline of what this Shard has done and what it might be able to do in the future. Most of those things will probably be wrong. But hey, perhaps I'll get another (small) thing right again this time. Edit: Almost forgot to address The Only Joe's concern: Thanks! It's possible that nahelspren could detect other-worlders and Splinters, yes, but Ym's spren probably still had lots of gaps in her memory. Also, it wouldn't be impossible for my hypothetical Experience Shard to suppress the Splinter-soul of his people. The Returned can do it, after all. Besides, Ym might have had non-Iriali blood. That would have given him enough of Honor's Innate Investiture to allow for a Nahel bond.

From Ym's Interlude in Words of Radiance, we learned a few things about Iriali religion. According to Ym, the "One" who knew everything became "many" (i.e. people) in order to experience everything. At first, it sounds like some sort of pantheism, perhaps suggesting that humans are merely a part of Adonalsium. But then when his young customer asked if the "One" was God, Ym said something that gave me pause: This sounded to me like the "many" only refers to the Iriali people, or the people who are part of the Long Trail, not to everyone in general. This makes it less likely (though admittedly not impossible) that "One" is Adonalsium. So now I'm wondering, what if "One" isn't Adonalsium per se, but a Shard of Adonalsium? *start of detailed, wild, and probably wrong hypothetical scenario* Imagine an Shard whose Intent is something like Experience, who secretly created a whole bunch of humans with Splinter souls (sort of like Endowment's Returned), made them look like mundane un-Invested humans who weren't Cosmere-aware, and planted them onto the Shardworld of an unsuspecting Shard. The original "Experience Splinter-humans" had no discernible Invested ability, and they weren't even immortal, but they were capable of mating with the local population, producing offspring that had the Innate Investiture of that Shardworld's Shard and a Splinter of Experience at the same time. And when those people died, Experience was able to absorb their Cognitive aspect (their experiences) and their Spiritual aspect, including the Innate Investiture from the other Shard, effectively stealing a tiny part of that Shard's power. Now, Experience's Shardholder knew that there were risks in holding too much of another Shard's power. For one, he wouldn't want the other Shard to get suspicious. Also, holding two different Shardic Intents might lead to balance problems (especially if the other Intent is opposed to Experience). Experience solved this problem by giving his people a strong sense of racial identity, starting with an easily distinguishable physical trait (golden hair), then later on with a shared mythology (the Seven Lands of the Long Trail) giving each of them a sense of Divine purpose. In this way, his people kept mostly to themselves, minimizing interracial relations. At some point, one of these Splinter-humans mated with an outsider and produced an offspring who grew up to learn how to travel to Shadesmar and to Worldhop. Not missing the opportunity to initiate the Long Trail, a group of Splinter-humans joined their Shadesmar-traveling half-brother in migrating to another planet: the Second Land. Thus, the Long Trail truly began. By the time they attained the Fourth Land (Roshar), they started calling themselves Iriali. Currently the other Shards are still unaware of what Experience has done, even as he now holds some of the power of at least four of them. Eventually (when his Splinters reach the Seventh Land?), he will have enough collective power to rival Odium (though perhaps not Harmony), although this power would have to be consolidated from all across the Cosmere. Theoretically, he will be able to create humans with a hybrid Innate Investiture from multiple Shards, which would make for some pretty powerful warriors. We could only pray that Experience is a good guy. *end of detailed, wild, and probably wrong hypothetical scenario*

Ah, pardon me for conflating the two. Back on topic, I just remembered how Axies' shadow points towards the sun just as Jasnah's points towards infused gems. On Shadesmar, Pattern's shadow points towards what Shallan calls the "not-sun" (another Cosmeric enigma). What do you guys think of this?

So Shards can perceive distant Shards as shining points of light in the sky? Interesting idea. Might be bad news for that Shard trying to survive by hiding out in space, though.

That's the thing,. Why would a star dim just because one of its planets is destroyed? Or are you saying that the blinking out of stars in that vision was purely symbolic?

Okay, this isn't really a theory but more like a request for other people's thoughts and theories. Recently I've been thinking about stars in the Cosmere, specifically the suns around which the major and minor Shardworlds revolve. I wonder what you guys think about them. We know that in the Cosmere every object has a soul (or a spren, if you're on Roshar), and that massive objects like planets have a strong enough spiritual presence to influence Shardic Investiture. But what about stars, which are typically a million times (at the very least) more massive than a planet? Do they have a stronger spiritual presence? Could Shards even Invest in them? Or are they already Invested? That's from the Way of Kings. It seems that whatever it is Odium is planning to do will not only affect Shards and Shardworlds, but also the suns of solar systems as well. What could this mean? Finally, the idea of stars having souls also makes me think about the nature of light and energy in the Cosmere. If we imagine that a star has a spiritual presence that is much, much stronger than that of a Shardworld, would it be possible for that "starsoul" to produce a spiritual aura of sorts, an aura that radiates energy, which manifests as light? We know how stars generate energy IRL via atomic fusion, but what if energy itself is an intrinsically spiritual thing in the Cosmere universe? That's from Shai in the Emperor's Soul. It seems obvious to me that the transfer energy to other objects is a form of connection to others, so perhaps stellar energy does originate from the star's soul (at least in the Cosmere). Any other star-related thoughts?

In the first excerpt, Kaladin wasn't physically transported anywhere. He was still on top of the roof, which he could still feel even as it turned dark. Note that the Parshendi experience the same thing when spren-bonding: As for Dalinar's last "vision", there were no reported highstorm when that happened, and the Stormfather denied that he had anything to do with it. The dream may be supernatural in origin, but it doesn't seem to be the same thing that Kaladin and the Parshendi experience.

Ooh, so I was on the right track, after all! Congrats to Veil and Jensen for thinking of watching that quaternion Julia fractal animation. From the the povray file used for this animation, the quaternion used was c=(-0.125,-0.256,0.847,0.0895). Who here knows a math person who might be able to explain the significance of that particular value? Would it be possible to generate the same shape from another value? A quick search on Google gave this page that also has a (different) 3D slice of a Julia set of that quaternion (among many others), but the author doesn't explain why he chose those values, so they could just be random for all I know. The animation was uploaded to Wikipedia back in 2006, so it's possible Brandon (or Peter, or another assistant) stumbled upon the Julia set Wikipedia article the same way we did. But maybe there's a more interesting story behind it. Hey Peter! Would you mind telling the story of how the Roshar shape was chosen?

Hi, Dad! Oh, and a belated welcome to you, BreathTaker! Someone gave me unsolicited Breath once. Didn't like the feeling. Made me really irritable. So I used all of it to Awaken a wooden stick with the Command to wallop the stupid Nalthian. It did so continuously until he Worldhopped away. The stick was Worldhopped with him. Anyway... have fun collecting your Breaths!

Very interesting, Tempus! This reminds me of my own theory about atium and lerasium. Last year I theorized that a piece of atium is physically indistinguishable from electrum, but has an inverted Allomantic effect due to the imbalance in its spiritual identity caused by being "completely of Ruin" (as Sazed said). So the internal temporal pushing effect of electrum becomes an external temporal pushing one. Similarly, I theorized that lerasium is just nicrosil that is completely of Preservation, and so has an external enhancement pushing effect (the opposite of nicrosil's effect). If we apply my interpretation to your theoretical god metals, tanavium would, in a sense, be Honor's Iron. Aonium would be Devotion's Bronze, skaium Skaa's Brass...I mean, Dominion's Brass, endowmenteel Endownment's Steel, cultivatium Cultivation's Tin, bavadinium Bavadin's Duralumin, and raysium Odium's Chromium. They all would be placed on the opposite side of the table from their base metal forms (Honor's Iron will be in Tin's position, etc.), just as you laid out in your post. (Irrelevant sidenote: I just realized how "Skai" is almost "Skaa". Weird how I never noticed that before...)

So it wasn't as conclusive as I thought. Well played, Moogle! *upvotes*

@Moogle: Yes, the four Essences thing was just me trying to make the KR connections more... neat... I guess you could say. I won't be shocked if it got debunked later on. I just enjoy doing these kinds of things. Oh, I deleted the Nalan part hoping that nobody will see it. Apparently I was too late. You're right, teleportation wasn't the only possible explanation for that scene.

Yeah, I didn't really explain it, did I? Sorry about that. Here's the process: For each Essence X, find the first Essence Y that is connected to X in the chart but is not adjacent to X in the table of Essences. If X was previously set as the extra Essence for the Order of Y, try to look for another Y if any exists. Otherwise, set Y as the extra Essence of the Order of X. If you're a programmer, here's a very abstract pseudo-code representing the algorithm (in case this makes things clearer): For each Essence X, For each Essence Y, If Y is connected to X and Y is not adjacent to X, If extra Essence of Order(Y) is X, Y' := Y. Else, Set extra Essence of Order(X) to Y. Continue to next X. End If. End If. End For. Set extra Essence of Order(X) to Y'. End For. At the time I thought this was the simplest, most elegant system where all the Orders have the same number of associated Essences (X, Y, and the two Essences adjacent to X) and where all the lines on the KR chart are accounted for. But perhaps someone has a better idea.

Hi DarkSong! First of all, welcome to the forums, and congrats on your first post. I'm positive that Syl's words in that scene will turn out to be really important in the future. Unfortunately we don't yet know exactly what "syncing a heartbeat to their essence" means, nor even if "essence" in this case refers to the in-world term or just the plain ol' English word. Still, reading the quote you gave did make me realize another Blood connection that I missed: The Essence of Blood is associated with the Order of Lightweavers, who aside from being able to manipulate light, can also manipulate any waveform, including sound. So even if the heartbeat is more important to Shardblade-summoning than the actual blood being pumped by the heart, that still points to the Essence of Blood as the focus.

He sends them as zipped Word documents via e-mail.