Jult

It's possible that it isn't useless. We don't know every variety of Aviar, but this WoB suggests that there's a potential to see a version of any power from the Surges or Metallic Arts: He also said they are going to be pretty Cognitive-heavy when it comes to powers. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that there are Rioter Aviars or Soother Aviars out there. So, Copperclouds could be very useful.

Contracts may also play some small role in this. Based on the way Starling reacts to the contract that Dajer presents and Ed's comments on it, contracts can be extra binding to dragons. It sounded more than just legally binding; which tracks with how we've seen other heavily invested entities interact with contracts and oaths. Tanavast said in WaT that the Shards were bound by 'divine rules'. Perhaps dragons are also? And they've agreed to certain limits on interfering with Shardic affairs?

That seems like the most likely option. I am curious as to what happened to her and Starling's father. I don't think they are actually dead. It's only said that something bad happened to them and that they couldn't be there for Starling's first transformation. IotE quote: I know this implies death, but it takes a lot to kill a dragon. And when Starling goes to the ancestral ocean, there's no mention of them. Not even a passing thought from Starling about how her dead parents would be somewhere on those shores.

Agreed. The similarities are interesting and there could be something there. But I think the most likely case is that the Aethers and Unmade are both based on similar underlying rules of the Cosmere. Brandon has said before that there's a tenuous relationship between the ten essences of Roshar and the Aethers before. WoB: The Unmade are probably just an extension of this effect. I think this will all be clearer once Brandon reveals his "Unifying Theory of Magic" that he has teased before (if that ever happens).

Everyone should still be able to bond Spren and therefore access Surges thanks to the new Oathpact. The Heralds protected the Spren from being reclaimed by Retribution. Access to Stormlight is really the only problem for Radiants right now. But there are ways around that (substituting Towerlight, for example).

I stand corrected. Also, I do subscribe to the Shu Dereth theories.

That does make sense to me. So, they really could have been there at any time. Re-reading the section where Ed explains the tapestry now. It sounds like the tapestry is complete. As in the Long Trail is over. Well, definitely not all of them did. Since there are still many Iriali running around in the book. I believe Autonomy's number is 8 (8 Sand Master ranks, 8 professions, and 8 Taishin council members). But the Long Trail could maybe be considered 7 Worlds PLUS wherever the Iriali started if you wanted to make 8 for Autonomy work. The Iriali working for Autonomy would explain how she got so many Avatars on so many planets (including Patji on First of the Sun).

For clarity, the exact quote is: I think this implies that he's not the only Shard to perform this mystery action. Just the only one still living (that Ed knows of). Perhaps we should look to known deceased Vessels (Aona, Skai, Leras, Ati, Vin, Rayse, Tanavast, Uli Da, and the unnamed OG Vessel of Virtuosity) for hints of what this action could be? "perform the -" is also a weird choice of words.

Did I miss this somewhere? How do we know they were on First of the Sun during Tress? Not saying it couldn't be true, but how did we rule out First of the Sun as the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd world?

I just assumed the Iriali were responsible for any Aviar who got off of Drominad. Starling got a map directly to the perpendicularity from them after all. Maybe the ones she met weren't the first to try going back? Or Autonomy could have moved them somehow since we know Patji is one of her Avatars. I suppose it's also possible that they just went through the perpendicularity on their own and migrated naturally. That'd probably require some means of navigating through Shadesmar though. I like the idea of a predatory bird obtaining a worm by eating an Aviar. I wonder if that's where most of the predators on Patji get their weird thought-detecting abilities from. It doesn't feel like a very natural ability.

I think the answer is Intent. Odium and Honor were trying to destroy one another. When Navani was trying to create the opposite of Voidlight in Rhythm of War, she got temporarily stumped by the fact that a tone and its opposite were identical until she tried humming with the Intent of creating an opposite tone. That was the key to creating anti-Voidlight and anti-Stormlight. In the cases of Towerlight and the formation of Harmony, the Intent was constructive rather than destructive. The fact that Honor and Odium's clashing resulted in only Anti-Honor Investiture may imply that Odium knew about this, and kept his Intent defense in this moment. Effectively baiting Honor into bringing about his own destruction. Ambition's situation seems to track with my speculations above. Odium may have just clashed repeatedly with Ambition until 'Anti-Ambition Investiture' outnumbered the 'normal Ambition Investiture'. And then he left her to be annihilated by her own mistakes. We've seen what happens when oppositely charged Investiture touches. This is the question that's bugging me. If Honor and Ambition accidentally created Anti-Investiture when fighting Odium, it would make sense for Devotion and Dominion to make the same mistake. Why, then, is the Dor not Anti-Investiture? Did Aona and/or Skai have some different Intent? Were they not trying to destroy each other or Odium?

There's a WoB that makes me suspicious of any new powers that resemble other systems: Obviously, he's referring to Autonomy. Who is no stranger to Scadrial's magic systems. I know 95% of the time we see recurring powers it's just 2 systems naturally reaching similar abilities (like Rosharan vs Yolish Lightweaving). But after seeing that WoB, I do always have to ask if Bavadin could be involved.

Oof that is a pretty brutal blow to the idea. We're gonna have to really hope that Brandon's hesitation there meant something. He could maybe be pulling something tricky like "the Unmade originated on Roshar, but whatever they were before they were Unmade came from somewhere else". But I feel like he'd just RAFO it over resorting to sneaky semantics. I haven't seen too many examples of sneaky answers from him.

Spinning this off from Isilel's Theory about the origins of the Unmade.. To summarize how we got here: @KaladinsSenseOfHumorSpren pointed out that Re-Shepir could be a corruption of the Midnight Primal Aether because her abilities strongly resemble midnight Aether. I then suggested that perhaps all 9 Unmade are corrupted Primal Aethers. My only real inspiration for this idea being some numbers working out conveniently. In TLM, Prasanva calls out: Which I noted as odd because he calls out what appear to be 3 specific primal aethers by name and then redundantly calls on all 12. But what if those 3 Primal Aethers are the only ones actively fulfilling their roles as "Gods" on Dhatri right now? Because something bad happened to the other... 9. I felt I was starting to deviate too far from Isilel's original Topic, but @ChipsAHoid expressed interest in continuing to spitball ideas around this potential connection between the Unmade and the Primal Aethers. So, here we are. To get the ball rolling, we know of 6 out of 12 types of Aether (I'm assuming the Aether Spores from Tress map one-to-one to the Primal Aethers because otherwise I think we'd only have 2 Aethers to work with and 1 would be Silajana's uncorrupted Roseite). They also seem to roughly map to the 10 Primal Essences of Roshar, but Brandon has said this isn't a strict rule and there will be some fuzziness. Which makes sense since there are different numbers of Aethers and Essences. Roseite - Crystal structures (associated with the Lucentia essence?) Zephyr - Bursts of air (associated with the Zephyr essence of course) Midnight - Black liquid that imitates a creature Crimson - Red spiky coral/carapace stuff (associated with the Sinew essence) Verdant - Plants (associated with the Pulp essence) Sunlight - Generates light and heat (Spark essence?) Also, a side note with spoilers for the unpublished Aether of Night novel: So! Roseite would not map to any Unmade because Silajana is still active on Dhatri. And I guess we get 2 more "freebies" in the form of Suna and Vishwadhar that also would not need to map to any Unmade. Hence, between Zephyr, Midnight, Crimson, Verdant, and Sunlight we need to map at least 3 of these to an Unmade or this idea is a bit dead on arrival. My best guess for Midnight: Re-Shepir is pretty clear already. My best guess for Zephyr: Yelig-Nar almost entirely because he is called the Blightwind My best guess for Crimson: Ashertman was recommended by @ChipsAHoid. My best guess for Sunlight: Sja-Anat because she only appears in reflections or perhaps BAM because "Ado" means light My best guess for Verdant: Maybe Chemoarish since she is sometimes confused with the Nightwatcher? And that's as far as I've gotten with this.

Good point. I think I got a bit of tunnel vision there trying to map things to the 3 categories without thinking it through. Maybe the Mindless are made from some other heavily Invested entity that was already less sentient than the Shards/Vessels? Some early Spren, perhaps? Or something like whatever the Evil on Threnody was before it was warped by Odium and Ambition's fight? Side note to that: do you think Odium witnessed the Evil's warping (WoB) and the Unmade could be his attempt to emulate or recreate that warping effect? Is that what "Unmaking" is?

I don't think Yelig-nar is one of the Mindless. I think the Mindless are Ashertmarn, Nergaoul, and (surprisingly) Moelach. Here's a collection of Hessi's Mythica quotes on the mindless (spoilered for length): Jasnah points out that Yelig-nar can speak in her notes:

It is very interesting to see a Full Feruchemist in this time period. And there is good evidence that Axindweth is a member of the Ghostbloods (she interacts with Mraize's Aviar). For future reference, though this: Is not a safe assumption. We know Demoux is a Scadrian and NOT a Ghostblood. He's a member of the Seventeenth Shard and he shows up in the Purelake region during TWoK. Other groups like Silverlight scholars possibly have Scadrians on Roshar too. There's also Sixteen, who technically isn't on Roshar, but he is in the Rosharan region of the Cognitive Realm. I'm so glad you brought this subject up. It's never really occurred to me until just now that most Worldhoppers greatly extend their natural lifespan. Just because Full Feruchemists and Full Allomancers aren't born anymore doesn't mean they're all dead. Axindweth could be one of several Full Feruchemists and Full Allomancers who are potentially still out there. That does simplify some things about the Malwish's tech in general.

More a random thought than a theory. But thanks! Yeah, it's tough because we haven't seen all of the Unmade in good detail and we don't even know what half of the Aethers do. More than half if you don't assume that Aether Spores have identical abilities to their corresponding Aethers. I'd be happy to keep speculating on it if you wanted to split it off into a new Topic. I don't want to detract further from Isilel's theory. If we're only focusing on Skai, Aona, and Uli da, that does map very well. We know there are three 'mindless' Unmade according to Hessi's Mythica. Ba-Ado-Mishram seems in a class of her own. And then that leaves 5 mid-intelligence Unmade. Could I propose: The 3 mindless are made solely from Odium splinters The 5 mid-tier are made from Aona and Skai (they may be a little less 'perfect' than BAM because of the Dor fiasco or just because he divided them further) BAM is made entirely from Uli da using lessons learned from creating the first 8 The midnight essence thing might just be a Yolish Lightweaving type situation. Where similar powers emerge because they are based on the same inherent forces within the Cosmere.

I think, in practice, the distinction between Shard and Vessel is more subtle than I tend to think about it. Especially, for Vessels who have been influenced by the Shard for very long times (e.g. by the end of Mistborn Era 1, Leras had been almost completely dominated by Preservation's). I believe there is a WoB somewhere on the Arcanum that you can make a Lerasium Metal Mind, but Brandon hasn't revealed what they actually do yet. My personal guess is that you'd be able to use it as an almost universal Metal Mind (storing any trait that a normal Metal Mind could). Similar answer. We know that all God Metals can be burned. But we don't know what they'll do. In the case of Tanavastium, I would personally guess that it would grant you access to Surges. Or maybe just the base Radiant abilities for absorbing and using Stormlight (increased endurance, healing, etc.).

Always love an Ati appreciation post! This is very interesting question. I want to preface my response by saying I draw a pretty hard line between Vessels and Shards. Especially in this case because I don't think Ati or Koravellium would be very in sync with their Shards' Intents in this scenario. I think Koravellium would have really struggled against the Intent of her Shard if she tried to fight Ruin. Spoilers for WaT: Granted this is just Taravangian's line of thought and he's not all knowing. But I think he's right in this instance. And I think that while Koravellium would've feared Ruin, Cultivation would have loved it. To me, the way Ati forced Ruin into acting feels super aligned to Cultivation's Intent. Decay encourages growth. Refinement requires the removal of impurities. Preservation prevented Leras from acting against Ruin, but at least it didn't want to side with Ruin. On the flip side, you're right that Koravellium would have been able to defend herself in ways that Leras couldn't. And even if Cultivation loved Ruin, Ruin would still probably want to destroy Cultivation. I imagine it boiling down to a scenario where Ati eventually gives in to the Ruinous urge to attack Cultivation. And, even if Koravellium could convince Cultivation to fight back, I think Ruin wins that fight. Largely because he got to strike first.

On a similar line of thought. It may not have even been fully on purpose. Rayse got hurt during his fight with Ambition. And it sounds like they bounced around the Cosmere quite a bit during the conflict. Bits of him could have landed anywhere.

Yeah. I don't think we know enough about either group to start mapping anything. But something to keep in mind for future titles. I believe you're thinking of Sja-Anat speaking to Shallan in Oathbringer. It's vague enough that I wouldn't automatically give Rayse credit for the "making". Though we do know he did the "unmaking". Rayse seemed to be winging it for a lot of his earlier actions. Like the Dor's creation was a result of him not really knowing what to do with Devotion and Dominion's Investiture. It seems plausible that he could have gathered up some chunks, and then simply couldn't figure out how to effectively use them for a while.

Oh! OH! So, I'm definitely leaping to conclusions. But in TLM, Prasanva calls out: I always thought the quote was really weird because we know Silajana is one of the Primal Aethers... Presumably Suna and Vishwadhar are also Primal Aethers. So why shout out "by the grace of these 3 specific Primal Aethers and all twelve Primal Aethers including those 3 I just mentioned"? It's weirdly redundant, right? But what if those 3 Primal Aethers are the only ones actively fulfilling their roles as "Gods" right now? Because something bad happened to the other... 9.

So, you want to spike someone to steal their connection, but then just pick the blade up and not use the spike? There's a WoB about stealing a Shardblade with spikes: Based on this, I'd say your plan would mostly work for Shardblades and Honorblades. I'm not sure about awakened objects. I'd agree with this. Especially for regular Shardblades. I can't find much detail on the bonding process for Honorblades. If this is the case, then you really want to make sure the blade is already summoned before you do the spiking.. Otherwise, it might be stuck in an unsummoned state.

This is gonna be my third negative post about Hoid, so let me note here that he's one of my favorite characters... But... Hoid's goals are huge. And one death isn't going to stop him. Brandon has actually said before that Hoid would be willing to kill for his goals: