VersatileThrenodite

34 minutes ago, Jult said:

Bondsmiths have so much going on that it's hard to pick just two

The bondsmiths seem way to unique. Navani seems to have a different set of powers compared to Dalinar for example

2 hours ago, Jult said:

I'm starting to think that the Orders aren't limited to one resonance each. Not just because of the Windrunners. We know Lightweavers' enhanced memories come from Resonances, which is mentioned in the Path description but is not an ability on their talent tree. And there are suspected resonances for Skybreakers, Edgedancers, and Elsecallers on the Coppermind that also don't line up with the unique talents above.

One of my IRL friends thinks that each order has an expression of one of their surges that's spiritual or cognitive in addition to the effects that manifest in the physical. Like windrunner squires are because they have a sort of spiritual gravitation effect. 

On 7/23/2025 at 10:41 AM, Jult said:

Note: These aren't specifically referred to as "resonance abilities" in the game. But they are the unique talents for each Order, and they occupy the same slot in each talent tree as Reverse Lashings do for Windrunners. So, I am deducing (perhaps incorrectly) that they ARE the resonance abilities.

This seems like a mix of resonances or each Order getting to be better at a primary surge than others. Also I thought the windrunner resonance was Squires. 

41 minutes ago, Argenti said:

I would be very surprised if Cusicesh was a Nephilim. The highstorms rain investiture down on their head every couple of days, which should disrupt either it or the stormfather.

Idk. In WaT when the enlightened spren are stabbed with the anti-Stormlight dagger it seemingly only destroys the honor aligned investiture in them. Rabonial used anti void light to kill her daughter too. I think Investiture needs the specific anti-investiture to be affected.

Also the Dakawaga wasn't harmed by the intensifer in either mode that they operated it in, which makes me think either Ed's explanation or the current Arcanist understanding of the Nephilim as beings of Anti investiture isn't entirely accurate.

5 hours ago, Mason Wheeler said:

That was not what Wind And Truth was about, and this story tells us that all of that "making things better" comes to naught in the end, that Scadrial and Roshar do not improve in the long run but both turn into horrible places.

I must have missed the place where Brandon wrote this is the finale of the cosmere. A lot of media will paper over the fact that progress isn't linear or uniform in order to tell a more palatable story. In fact a subtheme of this book was the positive and negative aspects of technological progress. Sixth's inner monologue was constantly weighing the pros and cons of his growing irrelevance in a safer modern world.

Personally I believe that "making things better" is a constant struggle and should never be taken for granted. I still see plenty of light at the end of the tunnel for our heroes.

Its always darkest before the dawn. Even the darkest nights will end etc... 

I'm also holding out hope that we just keep seeing the worst actors representing these planets and not the average person living there. 

39 minutes ago, Mason Wheeler said:

That was something that really bugged me about this story.  It feels like a continuation of something very bad we saw hints of beginning in RoW and exploding onto the scene in full force in WaT: bleakness.

WaT was supposed to feel bleak, but even in that bleakness there are rays of hope and potential for the future.

42 minutes ago, Mason Wheeler said:

The Malwish have turned into evil imperialist overlords and conquered half the Cosmere.  The Rosharans under Odium are conquering the other half and seem to legitimately consider it generous to tax their subjects at a rate of 99% and "let them keep" the last 1%.

I'm not sure we can paint a picture of the whole planet or even the faction these people represent. I'm not sure Odium or Retribution are still in charge of Roshar not to mention the only Rosharan we've seen so far was solo and a member of the Skybreakers who've already been shown to be hardliners in the timeline of the books.

48 minutes ago, Mason Wheeler said:

Nazh is dead. 

He doesn't seem to mind so much.

48 minutes ago, Mason Wheeler said:

Frost is missing, presumed dead.

I choose to be hopeful like Starling and view his absence from the Eternal Shores as an indication he's alive

50 minutes ago, Mason Wheeler said:

Hoid is locked up, unable to help anyone.

So he's just about as useful as usual? He doesn't seem to concerned or he probably would have tried giving starling a hint at where he is.

52 minutes ago, Mason Wheeler said:

Though we don't know the exact details, it's clear that the dragons exiled Starling for something involving trying to be compassionate to mortals rather than lord over them as a draconic tyrant.

Brandon's Dragons seem to be a combination of Tolkien's most discompasionite elves mixed with biblical angels. It sounds like their society has only gotten more calcified as the moderating voices in dragon society have died or cut themselves off from the cosmere. Its almost a stereotype of Brandon's at this point to have a protagonist that's diametrically opposed to their society. I felt it was pretty obvious from Starling's pov that her culture is stagnating and dyeing because they refuse to take part in the affairs of mortals.

1 hour ago, Mason Wheeler said:

It almost feels like Brandon is forgetting that so many of his fans read the Cosmere, and not trash like ASOIAF, because it is not trash like ASOIAF.  Bleakness and "grimdark" have no legitimate place in epic fantasy, and the Cosmere was one of the best refuges from that ugly trend.

Was.

It's ok to no longer feel like a series is for you. But I would argue the current state of the Cosmere is not much bleaker than it was during Mistborn era one.

There might only be a few known abilities. It seems like the abilities we do know about facilitate the survival of the birds and their partners. Its only been a few years since Patji was cleared to make raising the birds easier, and that probably will lead to new abilities being discovered.

1 hour ago, Treamayne said:

Have you read IED yet (and SotD, to some extent)? This is a large part of that story. 

Oh yes. But obviously our Malwish friends and the Skybreaker aren't working with the best of intentions. Treating the Prime Directive like the Prime suggestion. But Zellion or other more responsible individuals might have tried to be a bit more smooth.

1 hour ago, Treamayne said:

Possibly a better measure is the number of societies that are largely Realmatically Aware

If there's anything like a Prime directive, based on the Sunlit Man it seems like this is one of the biggest factors.

19 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

Not over less than 400 years. Yes, it is entirely possible that any given person won't speak a languge. But an educated person will know that the language is basically known.

Ask any former college grad in their 40's or 50's who the Rizzler is or what Aura is and you'd probably get different answers and that's just evolving through slang.

And that's not taking into account forced assimilation efforts. Many native American languages have virtually disappeared in only a few hundred years since the founding of the USA for example. Its not unreasonable even in a Brandon story for a minority culture to be suppressed.

13 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

Why is their language unknown on Lumar then?

Any number of reasons. Language is constantly evolving. Ask any random person off the street if they can read a middle ages form of their dialect let alone a potential root language like proto indo European

45 minutes ago, RedBlue said:

Notably, the dragon is Frost.

The same Frost behind the in cosmere 17th shard. Who's constantly giving Hoid a hard time for involving himself in planetary problems, turns out he was involved directly in a societies relocation however many thousands of years ago.

3 hours ago, Argent said:

On 7/1/2025 at 9:56 PM, Pagerunner said:

There is one last line in the book I have to disagree with hard. "It will be satisfying to see @Argent's face." No, it will not.

Well, it was for Ed!

What sort of Arcanistry do you think the Silverlight Argent gets up to?

3 minutes ago, Atlas333 said:

The two great giants of Epelli - no clue

Could it be Odium and Ambition fighting? The next line is he made them attack each other and rode the resulting wave across the sea? This doesn't feel right I'll admit because it seems like they have familiarity with the Nephilim. Maybe Odium and Honor clashing we know it created the shattered plains but what effect would it have had in the cognitive realm. Maybe the people of first of the sun are the sailors on the infinite sea mentioned in one of the stories we hear in Stormlight Archive.

2 hours ago, listerfeend said:

We also know that they only recently discovered First of the Sun, and, presumably, and that they hadn't been in the area long enough to tell the stories and build the belief that the monster would serve they who best it. 

He told them to tell the story so it might have spread quickly. Who knows how long the Nephilim stuck around after killing Cakoban but if it stayed in the general area it may have been compelled to return to the body as the Identity imposed by the story solidified. Also Cakoban was juicing and heavily invested when he died whos to say he didn't have an outsized influence on the entity.

42 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

All of them left Lumar, really everyboody. That is extraordinary, but seems to have ceased.

I don't think this is something we can guarantee. On Roshar some Iriali intermixed with the local population or switched to the local religion. This could be true of most other planets in their journey. We cant even guarantee that everyone left Roshar in WaT some might have been out of town when Cusicesh started pulling them into shadesmar.

I was actually thinking could the people of 1st of the Sun have started off as an Iriali offshoot? The golden eyes and skin of Cakoban in the flashback might indicate a connection. That or they come from a similar initial planet why else would an Iriali map show a location of 1st of the Sun?

Its going to be tempting to attribute any big weird "spren" to the Nephilim now, but I can't help but make a connection to Cusicesh.

1 hour ago, Grailmoth said:

Could the stories be modified to allow someone to form something like the Nahel bond with a Nephilim?

You could argue thats what we see when Sixth bests the Dakwara. Nahel bonds don't appear to be as structured without a system like the Oaths in place. Sixth bonds Rokke pretty easily and Sak can provide her abilities on a temporary basis to Vathi (though this might be similar to windrunner squires).

1 hour ago, Grailmoth said:

How sapient are the nephilim?

It probably varies based on how big a fragment they started out as as well as the identity they imprint on.

1 hour ago, Grailmoth said:

Could the collective perception of the individuals of the cosmere be manipulated to affect something at the level of a shard?

Is this Hoids long game? Go around the cosmere telling stories and nudging the perceptions of people in order to somehow affect the shards?

I've been thinking something along these lines for awhile stories have both a cognitive and a spiritual component. Shallan does something funky with the story of the girl who looks up for example. I think it will matter at some point.

1 hour ago, Grailmoth said:

How invested are the nephilim? More or less than the big spren and unmade?

They seemingly have a range of power levels as asigned by Silverlight arcanists. At the top level I would think theyre at least as powerful as the God spren and unmade if not more powerful. How big is a fraction of 1/16th of infinity?

4 hours ago, Ironeyes said:

Patji's attitude toward his worshippers matches too closely to Autonomy's characterization in Lost Metal to be a coincidence though. Moreover, the dream flashback shows that the shardpool predates the imprisonment of the Ambition splinter that became the Dakwara. 

I agree that its probably most likely that Patji is still an avatar of Autonomy. But I just thought it was worth entertaining the thought experiment. Also just because the splinter of Ambition that became the Dakwara came following Cakoban doesn't mean another splinter couldn't have already made it to 1st of the Sun. Also given Autonomies usage/corruption of local investiture systems I don't want to rule out Bavadin "unmaking" a splinter of ambition to form the avatar that became Patji.

Just now, Oltux72 said:

At a minimum Autonomy must know about Patji. She wouldn't sell the Ghostbloods Aviars, though.

Actually I kind of disagree based on WaT the mind animating a shard doesn't always seem to have full awareness of all their investiture. Also this brings up a thought I was having during my reading: Has Brandon changed his mind on the source of investiture involved here? We have old knowledge indicating Patji is an avatar of Autonomy, but with the focus on Ambitions rogue investiture I was starting to wonder if maybe the intelligence of Patji is invested by Ambition's splinters. The green color of the pool could also indicate this is where cultivation noped off to following WaT.

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• I'm also trying to understand the timing of Khriss's essay with respect to the overall Cosmere timeline. We know it was written before the events of the novella, and we get a line or two in the book about how the subastral had been found and lost a couple of times, but it really seems kind of inconsistent with how it had been presented in the essay. My reading had been "the area around the perpendicularity is extremely dangerous, and and the few expeditions sent there from Silverlight have not returned" referred to the dangers of Patji, and that expeditions had been killed after transitioning to the Physical Realm. Because it isn't dangerous in the Cognitive Realm; yeah, there are the predators that hunt on minds, but they get dismissed in the story as being pretty common, and copperclouds and other Clouding being a well-established workaround. The other two inhabited worlds in the system had also been studied from the Cognitive Realm, per the essay. So... I'm gonna keep that in mind on my eventual reread, see how well it fits, but it feels like a stretch to me. Like Silverlight, this huge hub where information is currency, just straight-up lost a planet?

There could be multiple explanations that work in world, like others finding similar maps to the Iriali one or Frost letting something slip in conversation and because of the lack of evidence being returned to Silverlight the general consensus is that no perpendicularity exists. Khriss seems the type to not necessarily hold with consensus on some matters and might still believe there is one. My assumption based on the things that don't track between the essay, early versions of the chapters and IoTED as published is that Brandon may have changed his mind on things. That and/or the changes he made to Stormlight Archive since publishing Arcanum Unbound  have effected what hes able to show us about the space age currently.

Overall I really appreciated this book. Brandon surprised me by addressing the colonial aspects of the story directly and showing the different ways that people tend to dismiss or fetishize aspects of less advanced cultures was handled better than I feared they might.

From the sounds of it I think some of the Evil have been able to be destroyed and while I know Investiture cant be destroyed forever or returns to the spiritual realm I do wonder if that would have an effect. Related I wonder if one of the fragments might house Uli Da's memories similar too the Stormfather in WaT having some of Tanner's memories and consciousness