skaa

(Tiny WoR spoiler and off-topic blather) Anyway... yeah, harakeke, you can probably have your copy replaced.

This looks very interesting. I can't wait to finally devour the whole book! Anyway, I saw this in the epigraphs thread: I know from the released Eshonai Interlude that Venli and her associates were supposed to be researching Scholarform. Here's a theoretical scenario: It's possible that they did find the secret to Scholarform, but their newfound ambition made them want to keep the form a secret, lest some other Listener outside their group discovered new forms before they do; they wanted to be the most celebrated form-experts in the history of the Listeners and they didn't want competition. This ambition could have corrupted them enough for their "gods" to influence their thoughts and actions even before they actually took Stormform.

Alright, I still don't have the book with me, but being the spoiler-loving skaa that I am, I now know a lot of the new reveals and I'd like to share some of my thoughts. I'll probably add more stuff here later when I finally get to read the whole book.

I'm from the Philippines. My first language is TaglishFilipino. Yes, definitely Filipino.

We know that Navani's Special Non-Numbing Painrial uses brass. That's the only example I could find, but I might have missed others. I know you've read this part of the WoK Ars Arcanum about Alerters, but I'll just put it here for everyone's benefit: At first glance, that seems to imply that emotion bracelets must use heliodors exclusively, but I guess there might be enough room for a different interpretation. Like, what if you only need one heliodor in an emotion bracelet, but it's what makes the whole thing work, and the other nine Polestones are just added to detect emotions other than love? That would mean that Love is the default emotion detected by an emotion fabrial, and that the other Polestones just act as extra filters. I think I'll stick with the most obvious and simplest interpretation (they're all heliodors), at least for now. I don't think the ten emotions need to be matched to the Heralds. It's like how there are ten Body Focuses. I don't think there's a Herald of hair, a Herald of fingernails, etc. These things are more associated with the Essences than with each other. So, Pulp might represent plants, hair, hate, the fifth Herald, etc., but that doesn't mean that hair is a kind of plant, or that the fifth Herald was known for hatred.

Could you give one example from the Cosmere books where the narrator (not a character or an in-universe document) states something that turned out to be wrong? Note that the book's Ars Arcanum does not count since we have WoB that those are in-universe things. Edit: Also, as I said, the narrator himself called Cusicesh a spren: That wasn't a statement of Axies' belief. That was just the narrator calling Cusicesh a spren.

Tsk, tsk. You lot will never reach the Tranquilline Halls with your sinful Void-loving ways. *goes to the temple to burn prayers*

As SirVarrock said, it is possible that Hoid knows the Heralds. As for how he knew to be in Alethkar just when Taln showed up, here are a couple of probably relevant WoBs:

One week left! REDACTED, I wish we had five days in a week like on Roshar.

Okay, fortunately none of my espoused theories absolutely require Nightwatcher to be Cultivation, but could you please give us a link to the source of that info? The Nightwatcher=Cultivation is a very popular theory around here, so I'm sure people will appreciate a citation. Thanks! Edit: Ninja'd by Weiry.

Lift says she "used words" to "capture" Wyndle. Wyndle was probably trailing Lift for a while before the "capture", so the bond could've already been strong enough for Lift to instinctively recite the First Ideal. Or... someone could've told her that "Life before death, etc." were the words used to capture "Voidbringers" like the one following her around, or something. She wouldn't necessarily have to know the connection of those words to the Knights.

Yeah, the reason I haven't contributed to the speculation here is that I already learned my lesson not to think too much about tiny out-of-context excerpts of unreleased books. I remember when J.K. Rowling posted a scene on her website from the then-unreleased Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, depicting the introduction of a new character. Everyone assumed he was the titular Half-Blood Prince and was all excited to finally learn what he looked like. Then it turned out he wasn't, and was in fact just some relatively unimportant character. I have a feeling that the Tor people are much bigger trolls than Rowling, so I'll just enjoy reading everyone's guesses while I wait for the book.

Hey guys, do we have WoB about the time measurement system on Roshar? Cheese Ninja says that there are 20 hours in a Rosharan day, but I'd also like to know the exact number of minutes in an hour, and hopefully the number of seconds in a minute as well. I'm asking this because I wanted to try deciphering the significance of Cusicesh's appearance schedule. How many minutes have passed between midnight and "seven forty-six in the morning" on Roshar? Or seconds? I hope that might give us a clue.

@Duskshard: I agree that one of those is probably close to the truth, and I'll go with the second one. As I said in Shardlet's Nightwatcher thread, I now think that the Intents of Honor, Cultivation, and Odium are represented in all the magic systems on Roshar. It's just a matter of which Shard owns which system. So, Surgebinding is Honor's system because it is based on oaths and ideals, but it also has bits of Cultivation in it (e.g. the Growth Surge, and the bondspren that are fully or partially of Cultivation), and most likely Odium as well. I think Cultivation's own system is still unnamed (if it will ever have a name). I think it is a purely naturalistic system, something that doesn't require consciousness or sentience. Parts of it can be found in how some animals have symbiotic relationships with spren, and how spren are attracted to certain gemstones (fabrials). Again, I think Honor and Odium's Intents also manifest in that system. Perhaps non-sentient emotionspren are Honor's contribution, while non-sentient voidspren are Odium's contribution. As for Voidbinding, I believe it is Odium's system. Moogle is correct in a sense that Cultivation does have something to do with it (e.g. the Old Magic), and I think Honor somehow does, too. But Odium is probably the one responsible for most of the Voids. I guess this is a good place to link to my unfinished Voidbinding theory. I placed it in my Coppermind user page since I didn't want to create a forum thread for an unfinished theory, but perhaps you'd be interested in seeing its development. @Moogle: Jasnah does list three categories of (I'm assuming non-sentient) spren: naturespren, emotionspren, and voidspren. I think voidspren are things like deathspren or even rotspren, but I'm not sure.

That might actually be the case, Moogle. But why would Cultivation have this dark persona when Honor was still alive? Is this really part of her Intent, and did Honor simply accept her despite this? Or was she somehow working with Odium at this point? This is very troubling. Edit: It occurred to me that just as there is Ruin-based Allomancy (the Seer ability) and Preservation-based Hemalurgy (lerasium spike; purpose still unrevealed), there must also be Honor and Cultivation-based Voidbindings. The Old Magic could simply be using Cultivation's Void, her own contribution to Odium's system, just as she is (probably) the one responsible for the Growth Surge in Honor's system. I wonder what Honor-based Voidbinding looks like. Perhaps more importantly... which Surge is Odium controlling?! Probably Division.

Uh-oh. I think I found a snag. Here's a quote from the Way of Kings (the in-universe book that Nohadon wrote): So there was already a Nightwatcher during Nohadon's time (long before Tanavast's death), and it seems she already had a dark reputation by then. Or could this just be an ancient mythological personification of death that the modern Nightwatcher was named after?

Pun intended? It's alright. I was just speculating, anyway.

Oh, I wasn't calling my theory certain, just the fact that actually embedding the Blade in stone will make it stay put. Or are you disputing that? Anyway, my theory goes further than that by saying that you don't even have to embed it in stone, that it simply has to be on the ground when you let go of it. Sorry for the misunderstanding. About that Elokhar scene, the force of his wrist being smashed on the floor could've knocked the Shardblade upwards into the air; it would have turned to mist before landing on the ground (I verified this experimentally by whacking my own wrist on the floor while holding something relatively light). In Salinor's case, he definitely wasn't throwing his Shardblade upwards, but was rather letting it slip onto the sand.

That is interesting. On the other hand, whenever we see someone who intentionally wants to keep his Shardblade from disappearing when he lets go (e.g. the Heralds, Dalinar, Sadeas in the released WoR chapter), we see him ram his Blade into stone. Doing that prevents the Blade (whether it's an Honorblade or a regular Shardblade) from vanishing. That is certain, no maybes of what ifs about it. Now, we see Talenel letting go of his Honorblade, most likely unintentionally (as he was unconscious), while it was touching stone, and it does not vanish. Is it such a big leap of logic to suggest that stone (or perhaps anything associated with Talus) is the key element here, and not intent or Blade type? Edit: Apparently Salinor let his Shardblade "slip from his fingers" while he was lying on the ground. The ground was covered with sand, though, and I don't know if sand can be considered to have an Essence of Talus (I think it does; sand is just tiny bits of rock, after all).

What if Taln's Honorblade didn't vanish simply because it was touching stone at the time? It appears that even when a Shardbearer lets go of his Blade, for as long as it is touching stone (not even rammed into it), it won't turn into mist and vanish. So when Szeth dropped Jezrien's Honorblade after Gavilar slammed him in the face, the Blade naturally vanished as it should. It wasn't touching stone at the time.

Indeed, assuming my theory is correct, it's possible that the other non-main Shardworlds also have an Essence. Um... you saw the quote I posted. He said "I should have realized he'd come for me." Are you contradicting what Tanavast explicitly said? Anyway, I'm sure Brandon will surprise us all by making things a bit more complicated than I laid out, like maybe Shardworlds have-- *drumroll*-- two Essences! Or something. This was all just a fun little thought experiment that I decided to share with you all, so I'm really happy that a lot of you liked it enough to upvote. Thanks!