Jult

Wish I could find more references to him. I gave this some more thought overnight. I don't know if I'd consider Lifebrother as a potential primeval spren. He could be. But I think he'd fit in better with Nightwatcher, Stormfather, and the Sibling than he would with Night, Wind, and Stone. I'd say he's more likely to be created from the 4th primeval spren (as Stormfather was created from Wind), than he is to actually be the 4th primeval spren. Which could mean there's potential for a 4th modern-day Bondsmith. Idk though. That's all gut feeling speculation from the little that we know. I don't have much to back it up with.

Wow I don't even remember the Lifebrother, so I dug up the reference. Not Szeth, but Pozen (the Elsecaller Honorbearer) speaking to Szeth as a child in WaT chapter 57: Interestingly, the only other mention of the Lifebrother I could find was in WoK where Szeth refers to him as a Vorin god.. Which feels inconsistent. His name fits a similar pattern to Stormfather and Nightwatcher (although so does the Dustmother's so I'm not sure if we should count that in our favor; especially since the Sibling doesn't follow the pattern). The wording is tricky. I'm not 100% sure on if he's associating the Lifebrother with the soil, mountains, sun, and moons. Or if he's listing 4 different spren. If he is, maybe: Soil = Stone Mountain = Wind Moons = Night Sun = ??Day?? Fully conscious of the fact that I'm really stretching with Wind being the spren of the Mountain in that mapping. But it's fun to throw out guesses. It's also possible that Pozen is saying 'spren' in the general sense. As is "the near infinite number of mountain, sun, and moon spren"

It's barely mentioned. I had forgotten it too. I don't think the Spren would be the whirlpool itself. But it could reside at the bottom of it or something. They describe it as 'the place the ocean drains' or something along those lines. Which makes it sound fairly massive for a whirlpool.

I guess also in the category of unusual water phenomenon there's the Great Abyss whirlpool near Uvara.. If Uvara actually exists, that is.

It's really hard to say considering we only have rough information on how exactly the timelines from different books add up. A couple more options might b Hoid got stuck. Between getting 'cursed' in Tress and becoming a statue in Yumi.. I think we can safely say he's not always readily available to travel to Roshar. Note: both of those specific examples take place long after the Recreance. Dawnshard shenanigans. I don't think we exactly know when the Change Dawnshard arrived on Roshar. Or when exactly the Survive Dawnshard was/wasn't in Hoid's possession. But I think it's possible that Change arrived shortly before the Recreance and, if Hoid had Survive at that time, he maybe hadn't figured out a safe/stealthy solution for bringing Survive to the same planet as another Dawnshard. Oaths. Maybe he made some kind of agreement between the Oathpact and the Recreance with either Tanavast or Rayse to stay out of their conflict. This would have become null and void upon Tanavast's death; allowing Hoid to return in later years.

I like this take. Maybe even better than I like 'Day' as a potential identity for this spren. A water-based spren could be tied to some of the more unusual water-related phenomena like the Weeping or the Purelake.

And my wife laughed at me in college when I enrolled in a class called 'Chaos and Fractals'. Said it would "never be relevant to anything I do". Joke's on her. It just saved me at least two Google searches. Also, that is very fun fact that I did not know. Also, a fun fact! But the fact that Roshar's map is literally one of the examples on the page that you linked makes me feel like it's probably a common example that Brandon picked because it looked cool and resembles a storm more than any other reason. We may be digging a bit too deep now.

Fair enough. Another thing I literally just stumbled upon was a line in chapter 60 of WaT that I must have glossed right over when reading: I got excited and then disappointed by this one. I'm having trouble working it into my 4th primeval spren theory.. Honestly, it probably fits better with the 4th Shard theories I was just critiquing (awkward). But I guess it could be possible that Honor, Cultivation, and Odium appropriated existing tones that were always part of the planet (someone please let me know if there's text anywhere that supports/contradicts this)? If that's true, then we're back to Adonalsium using fours in Roshar's construction and I'm not completely dead in the water.

Wind not mentioning another primeval spren when talking about Stone and Night is a big hole in this theory. The only thing I can think of to fix it is to say that maybe whatever event caused the 4th moon to crash (whether it was the death or departure or some other event related to this Spren) caused enough ripples in the Cognitive or Spiritual realms to affect Wind's memories or connections related to the 4th Spren? Feels admittedly handwavy on my part though.

Interesting. I hadn't considered that the moons may have spawned into existence upon the Shards' respective arrivals. Do you think that has something to do with the unusual structure of the Rosharan system? Maybe some strange side effect of Braize's constant attraction of Investiture? I'm glad someone else disagrees with the 4th Shard theories floating around. The timeline of events is the biggest issue that I have with that idea (the 4th moon pre-dates the existence of Shards). Also, I think WaT truth gave us a less tenuous link to Adonalsium with this Tanavast quote:

Maybe not the best Topic title, but I was trying to dance around putting spoilers in the title. What I really want to talk about is primeval spren: Wind, Stone, and Night. I have this idea that they are not a trio and are actually a quartet with a missing member. I've had this idea in my head for a while, and I keep coming up with more reasons to support it. So, at this point, I want to see if other people are thinking the same way or if I'm just diving into confirmation bias. I really started thinking about this when I learned that Roshar and the spren existed before Honor and Cultivation showed up. Adonalsium tends to be associated with the numbers 4 or 16. So, why create 3 primeval spren? And why 3 moons? But I shrugged it off because 3's show up all over Roshar and most people assume 3 is Cultivation's number. Then that storming 4th moon showed up.. Okay. So, Adonalsium did create 4 moons. And still only 3 primeval spren? I've heard a lot of people saying that the 4th moon implies a 4th Shard is on Roshar. But the moons pre-date the Shattering, so that never made sense to me. I think it instead implies the existence of a 4th primeval spren. There are some interesting ideas that would follow from this like: We know Bondsmith's historically bonded to Wind, Stone, and Night before the Stormfather, Sibling, and Nightwatcher took their places. If there was a 4th primeval spren, could there be a 4th Bondsmith? Wind and Stone have a sort of yin-yang situation going on. Would the 4th primeval spren be Night's opposite? Day? If yes, would Day's relation to flamespren be similar to Wind's relationship to windspren? Were Honor, Cultivation, and Odium aware of the 4th primeval spren? Did they create some 4th sibling that the others forgot about (their memories have been less than stellar) What color would this 4th spren be associated with? Orange? That color played an interesting role recently. I've got other thoughts but I'm also starting to ramble.. So, what do y'all think?

An interesting thing that occurred to me about the 'new' Oathpact from the end of WaT is that Kaladin lacks the connection to Odium that the original Heralds had. So, the new Oathpact sort of already has 10 connections to Honor and 9 connections to Odium. I'm sure the duality of Venli's powers will come into play in a big way. But I don't know if it will be through a new Oathpact. I think you're right that she'll lean into her scholarly background. Maybe she'll join Navani in Urithiru and help her continue to investigate the connections between the different types of Lights and Tones since Raboniel sure isn't around to continue assisting.

The way Focus points work kind of reminds me of Blades in the Dark. And I can't help but think of Fate when I see the plot dice; although Fate uses them differently. There are Injury tables. Just two as far as I recall (at least in the beta rules). 1. There's a physical one that you roll on whenever you hit 0HP (or if your GM decides you deserve an injury from some story event). Rolling high gives you a wound that lasts for a short time (a day is the minimum). Rolling low gives you a wound that lasts longer (or even permanently). When you roll on the injury table you subtract 5 from the roll for each of the existing injuries that you have. Rolling a negative 6 or lower just outright kills you so you really don't want to let injuries stack up. 2. There's also a spiritual one that I haven't had the opportunity to use yet. But it's primarily for things like Shardblade injuries. I think the main difference is that these can only be healed under special circumstances (i.e. some kind of Invested healing).

It's very fun so far! I have a lot of D&D experience. Here's how I think they compare: Note: the beta rules are very Roshar-specific. I imagine things will be genericized more in the official rules. Character creation: Instead of 'Classes', the Cosmere RPG uses 'Paths'. One really cool thing about Paths is that they're divided into two types 'Heroic Paths' and 'Radiant Paths'. Heroic Paths are things like 'Scholar' or 'Soldier' - normal person roles. You start with a level in one of the Heroic Paths and could just stay on that one path the whole time to become a crazy good Soldier. But eventually you'll get the option to multipath into one of the Radiant classes. I like this a lot compared to D&D's class system where I feel like you get very powerful very quickly. In this game, you have to walk before you can Windrun. Outside-of-combat: this part of the experience is very similar to D&D. Instead of "Skill Checks", there are "Tests of Skill", but it's still rolling a D20 and adding a modifier based on your skills and proficiencies (although your main attributes are different from the 6 used in D&D and the skills that you can be proficient in are different as well). The special 'plot die' that the game includes does add a level of excitement compared to D&D. And there's a special resource called 'focus' that all characters get that can really help your players feel like they aren't entirely at the mercy of the dice. There are quite a few Path-specific skills that apply to conversations and NPC interactions that do a good job of encouraging player interaction and roleplay. In-combat: This was the part that felt the most different from D&D to me. By a lot. We've only had a handful of combat instances so far in our campaign, and they were against low level enemies. But even in those simple fights, it felt very different from D&D. I think the combat probably has a higher learning curve than D&D's, but I also feel that (once everyone at the table has the hang of it) combat will be much more fast-paced and dramatic than D&D. Overall, I think the game is great! For me, it feels like they used a lot of popular TTRPGs as a model and then improved upon them all. However, the one con that I can't get out of my head is that it does have a large barrier to entry for new players. I don't know that I'd recommend it to anyone who hasn't read the books.. Unless you feel like giving several lectures on Realmatic Theory.

I'm curious. Is anyone else out there already playing? I've got a group of 4 friends playing using the beta rules and Demiplane's beta character sheets. We started out with the Bridge 9 adventure and then continued with the same characters and some homebrew story from there.

Oh for sure. It's taking the least moral aspects of the Scadrian and Nalthian systems and merging them. I think the majority of the Cosmere would frown on it just as they frown on Hemalurgy and Lifeless already. If anyone is doing this, it would be future villains. I'm just saying that it sounds mechanically possible from what we know about these methods of Investiture.

Oh that's VERY interesting. I hadn't seen that WoB yet. I wonder how he lost it. Anyone who could take down 'the great dragon god' sounds like a big threat. Although I guess there are other ways to lose a Shard (e.g. Virtuosity). Well, we have this WoB from Brandon: And we have quite a few saying that there could be dragons hiding amongst the 'humans' in the books we've already read. My guess is that most of the time a dragonborn would appear like a normal human. But it would be cool if their 'dragon' form was closer to a dragon-human hybrid like you're describing. Maybe they'd be incapable of fully transforming but could sprout wings or tails or horns or scales on command?

There are also some 'offscreen' dragons: Hoid exchanges letters with Frost (a dragon) and Frost's sister in WoR In the Epilogue of WaT Hoid uses a Tamu Kek to contact "the meditative realm of the dragons" for "wisdom of the ancient dead"... Whatever that means. Oh, I've been meaning to bring this up somewhere. Tanavast refers to Medelantorius (Valor's Vessel) as "the great dragon god" in Chapter 115 of WaT. I assumed this was just some kind of title and not literal because of the WoB you referenced, but now his Coppermind page has him listed as a dragon too.

I think I'd be more interested in just seeing Vasher bond a Spren and have access to both Surges and Breaths without necessarily combining the two. Hoid uses both already, so it's possible. Or maybe he'll just reunite with Nightblood since Nightblood can grant access to Surges now. Either way I would like to see him rise in the ranks of Worldhoppers playing around with multiple forms of Investiture. From what we've seen so far, he's just been dabbling in it.

I think you'd be right. He might be able to keep them together for a little bit. But I think 3 unaligned Shards would quickly break a shared Vessel. "Unaligned" being the key word. If you managed to pick up 3 that didn't conflict, you'd probably be able to keep it together longer. For Taravangian, specifically, I could see a scenario where he acquires a third, realizes that maintaining stability is going to be impossible, and then launches a dangerous, desperate blitz for a 4th Shard to 'balance' himself out before he goes boom.

Breaths might be a bit closer. People on Nalthis exchange Breaths for money all the time. Speaking of Nalthis... I don't think there are currently any examples of it, but I'm curious about how a Spike would interact with one of the Lifeless from Nalthis. There's a very old WoB that makes it sound like it could work in certain situations: Do they exist in an 'alive-enough' state to keep the Spikes from rapidly deteriorating? Ichor-alcohol seems to stave off the deterioration of Breaths. Maybe it would work similarly with Spikes? Warbreaker's epilogue does mention the creation of an even more potent ichor-alcohol. AND there's a lower risk of a super-powered slave rebellion when the slaves are obedient zombies (speaking of monstrous). Maybe the future isn't trading spikes, but trading Spike-powered soldiers.

Actually, the essay for Threnody in Arcanum Unbounded frustratingly obscures the final location of Ambition's Splintering: Seems they bounced all over the Cosmere and caused some widespread damages before Ambition went down. I only remember the line because it also left things vague regarding how Ambition was finally Splintered and by who. I had a theory for a while that Mercy dealt the final blow because we know she was somehow involved in the conflict, but there are some lines in WaT that contradict that now.

Yikes. Big big mistake on my part. Thanks for catching it! I've edited my previous post. That's definitely less motivation for the Returned to turn on Endowment. But I still think their Connection to Endowment feels similar enough to the Heralds' Connection to Honor/Odium that Taravangian could exploit it.

^This is the correct answer. I'd add to point 2 that the Vorin Church is likely applying the incorrect label on purpose. They teach that royalty is granted divine authority by the Almighty. To have a member of the royal family dispute that claim is a huge political issue for the church. I think they need to spin the narrative in a way that completely dismisses Jasnah's arguments because they likely recognize that they have little chance of winning the debate if they acknowledge her arguments. And they have to be very careful about how they do it because a good percentage of their followers are probably more loyal to the throne than they are to the church. Alethi politics aside.. I think you're also spot on with point 3. And that Brandon was spot on in his writing. As a catholic-turned-atheist myself, getting people to call you an atheist can be like pulling teeth. They'll often use try to replace it with a less definitive label like 'agnostic' or 'doubtful'. I really liked it (or at least related to it) whenever Jasnah corrected someone on their word-choice about her beliefs.

Also, I feel it's worth noting that the names of the Shards aren't 100% set in stone. I've seen a few WoBs that dance around the subject a bit like this one: Or this much older one: So, I feel it's not too crazy to suggest that perhaps the Shard we know as 'Devotion' or some other Shard could have been called 'Love' in the hands of another Vessel.