Xelaadryth

Apologies if it's hard to follow; the framing of this is the Scientific Method; start with a hypothesis, test the hypothesis, when it fails then adjust the parameters and test again. This video series is documenting the process I'm using to attempt to reverse engineer the Cosmere. We are missing large amounts of information, which is why I tried to apply as many systems of rules as possible until it eliminates all the unlikely possibilities, leaving only likely possibilities. While it's not guaranteed to work, it leaves us with the most likely set of results, since even if some of the restrictions are unnecessary, it might solve for other similar restrictions. I'm not sure what you mean by "obscured"; if you mean "unreleased info" then of course everything in here is based on conjecture on unreleased information. I should have been more clear though that this is also based on the theory that the Cosmere is even solvable at all, so apologies for not clarifying that at the beginning. I don't assume that EXIST is the odd shard out; the conclusion I came to after trying many other possibilities is that CHANGE is the dawnshard command that is different, as it always works backwards as negation from everything else, as explained by the 3 realms of physical/cognitive/spiritual, and CHANGE is the extra fourth "realm". The "switching places" is just showing where the assumptions I made broke down, to demonstrate that this wasn't just me guessing once and getting it right on the first try, but you're right that it does make things far more confusing and seem completely arbitrary. The point that I don't mention clearly that is extremely important is that the entire time I'm maintaining 5-7 sets of rules that are all still true, even if I drop a single idea like "the middle two shards must form a pair", I'm still maintaining all of the other theories from before. If you try to apply every single rule I mention from the start of the video to the end on the final wheel, every single rule should work perfectly. The mistakes and placeholders I use in the middle were purely to demonstrate how I got there and "show my work". I'm actually still working on the follow ups to this, and if I'm not crazy and it's actually possible to solve, then I'll try to organize it a bit clearer once I get a final solution; I recorded these 3 videos at like 4:30am and had been missing sleep for days trying to see what secrets I could solve, but basically even if a few of these conclusions are wrong, the few that are right lead to many many more theories and ideas that I'm not ready to release yet. I don't really mind if people don't believe me right now, once I get to a final conclusion then I'll make a new post. Thanks for commenting though!

Link to full playlist of 3 videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIydPlrjvMNw I made 3 videos to clear the 3 gates of the Cosmere, and explain how I solved them. This isn't just a regular theory, it's answering the challenge that Brandon Sanderson issued to us when he released Wind and Truth at the end of 2024. This explains: Likely storylines and titles for upcoming books Extremely strong theories on the fate of the Cosmere, including who the enemy really is Where focus, intent, investiture, identity, connection, and fortune come from The names of all the Dawnshards Where the First Ideal of the Knights Radiant comes from What The Diagram is How Nightblood was created What the Night Brigade and Silverlight want Where the Fused and the term Voidbringers come from The names of the unnamed Shards The exact names of the Yolish surges, and how they are sealed to the surgebindings The 3 Silmarils of the Cosmere And more I don't mind the doubters, but feel free to message me if you want to collaborate on the hunt.

These friends had no intention to ever read Sanderson, so part of my goal is also to trick them to getting invested in the Cosmere... Part of the fun is them discovering the world all by themselves; running into all the social faux pas sitting at the wrong table at dinner, trying to request the wrong weapon from the weapon seller, my non-binary PC learning about property... it's been pretty interesting! I'm not sure what level of spoilers is okay in the intro forum, but the two that are familiar with Cosmere are from the Purelake and Shinovar. The four others I made up a generic fantasy kingdom called Nuria and someone Connected them to rural Alethkar. In total there were 9 characters from Nuria (mix of NPCs and PCs), each Connected so strongly they attracted, uh, attention. They just discovered the words a few sessions ago and finally know why weird things kept happening around them! I based the matches based on decisions the players made themselves, partially their stats, partially how I think they would enjoy the gameplay, etc. They cover every role except for some of the main ones covered in the books. The ones that are missing also happened to suit the ones that have read them! I didn't have anyone with a dark and mysterious past, my group is a bunch of filthy liars who won't follow the rules, and once they didn't protect a shopkeeper who they had just talked to. But generally they're pretty good other than these occasional transgressions. Although I have one player who is quite questionable and likes stabbing prisoners in the back with poison... she hasn't sworn to anything yet though but I'm sure she'll get there eventually. Essentially the set up is that they got recruited by an organization hunting people who are "Possessed".

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I haven't been in a forum for a long time; I'll probably mostly lurk but it's cool to see all the stuff going on! Thanks for the warm welcome!

Hey I'm Xel, been reading Sanderson awhile starting with Mistborn once it was recommended by enough friends. At this point I've read most of his books, including Infinity Blade, and a bunch of other fantasy series too. I was reading up on Dawnshards for lore notes for the Cosmere RPG campaign I'm running when I stumbled into the rabbit hole of a bunch of crazy theories. I ended up coming up with my own theories and wanted to talk about them so...here I am! I made a post over in the Cosmere Discussion forum and someone said it'd be a good idea to introduce myself here! My campaign has 6 players and we meet weekly in-person. 3 of them have never read Sanderson or played a TTRPG before, and of the 3 remaining, only 2 of them have read Sanderson. Only 1 of them has read all of the Stormlight Archive books. I wanted to run a Stormlight Archive campaign starting from pretty much the beginning of the Way of Kings and introducing the players to the Cosmere by letting them walk into it face-first, so I isekai'ed them in to Roshar. Can't talk about more details without getting into spoilers, but things are getting exciting! See y'all at Dragonsteel Nexus!

Could you link yours btw? I dug through a bunch but I might've missed it. Oh I found it, yeah I did look at this one but I think due to Occam's razor (simplest explanation is usually best) I didn't go too many levels deep. I took my hypothesis (four words that form a PROCESS of creation), tried to categorize the 16 shards into 4 quadrants that fall under those Commands, then and rather than try to extrapolate beyond those systems, I tried to restrict my theory with more and more rules to create order until I had a simple and closed system. Thanks, appreciate it! I'll definitely check it out, just had this theory keeping me up since last night so I had to get it down on paper haha. I've seen a lot of quadrants include Commands like FEEL, THINK, UNITE, DESTROY, etc but while you can categorize the shards into them, they don't explain why dawnshards are Commands of creation. If it was "giving life" then more of these make sense, but as an engineer, when I want to create something, I have to think about what it'll be first before I start making it, which led me down the path of something like IMAGINE, UNDERSTAND, DESIGN, PLAN, SHAPE, or FORM. Same if you're an author creating an epic fantasy universe; it has a bit more intention than simply "THINK" or "FEEL" as part of the process of creation. Originally I had the Command INTEND, MOTIVATE (like hate/love/ambition/whimsy) first, but moved away from it since it caused other problems. Later on when I thought of what it means to exist, I remembered that even after coming into being, until a relationship is drawn to something else, such as being observed, some philosophies don't consider it to exist at all. This goes into quantum physics a bit but it's basically like Schrodinger's cat, things must be observed before they exist in a certain form. An example is that a plant is not green; the plant is simply a thing that happens to reflect green light, so a human would see it as green. But if the "you" doesn't exist, no one is there to observe it as green, so therefore it is not green; it simply reflects some human-visible waveforms of light. A different creature might not have the cones to see green light or might not be able to perceive light at all, or maybe can perceive bands of light humans can't, so they would say it's something else. Anyway, this means you must have CONNECTION (which feels a little less opinionated than BIND or UNITE) before something is fully created. Might be what Sanderson meant when he said one of the dawnshards is different from the rest? You can design completely in your mind, without ever putting pencil to paper. With the alternate names of IMAGINE, UNDERSTAND, DESIGN, PLAN, SHAPE, or FORM, you can imagine a Nightmare Painter visualizing something before drawing it, or essentially conceptualizing something mentally without physically creating it yet. For instance in writing this theory, first I had to have the Ambition to figure it out, the Virtuosity (or artistic capability/creativite talent) to synthesize and come up with the ideas, Invention to make the mechanical systems work, and then Reason to logically explain it. However, none of those systems resulted in a physical object, it was still all Cognitive. I 100% agree with you that DESIGN is probably not the exact word so as not to conflict with the character, so maybe PLAN would fit better if we don't move any shards around. Originally I had Whimsy up there and called it IMAGINE but it messed up some of the pairings. That's actually what I felt was weird, it shouldn't be four words that simply add up to creation, there should be some kind of order or a cycle to them, which is what led me to come up with my own quadrants that would form such a cycle. Also I would consider "creating" one of the steps of "remaking", not the other way around. Remaking would be some cycle of "destroy" and "create". This is a common problem in all quadrant systems; the quadrant part isn't the important part though, it's everything else. The "contained pairs" and the antonym "edge pairs" across edges are more novel(even if those are also in the wrong spots), but most importantly it's the "edge" shards defining the limits of Intent for the Command that is the real breakthrough since it feels like it adds guardrails to a cyclical process. I think since the plan for the 16 shards was most likely created around the same time as Mistborn, it's very likely that there are opposing pairs. Also with pairs like Autonomy and Dominion, it seems likely that there are other pairs. And it's more likely that every shard is paired, than the chances of special exceptions, similar to how if metals have a push and pull it'd be weird to have exceptions to the rule. God metals obviously were an exception there but they were on top of an existing system. I had Mercy opposing Ambition for awhile but it didn't feel quite as accurate; for instance I would pick Mercy + Vengeance/Vindication, or Ambition + Contentment/Satisfaction/Peace. I felt like the only way Mercy would be in here at all is if it was to fill other very specific purposes, such as opposing Odium yet fitting within EXIST. The "edge" shards themselves don't cross into the other Commands, their hard oppoosites do. The purpose of the "edge" shards is to demarcate the boundary of their current Command, in this theory. For your example, Ruin defines one of the extremes of CHANGE, whereas Preservation defines one of the extremes of EXIST, despite being opposites that are adjacent to each other. In Dawnshard the mural depicts a shattering into 4 and then to 16. Plus since it was around the same time as Mistborn, I'd suspect that 16 is the true number of shards we can calculate via a system like this; if there are shards outside the system similar to the 3 god metals, I imagine they'd be something like "Void" or "Chaos" which would not be categorizable in a system. Here's the excerpt when Rysn finds the Dawnshard: Thinking more on the "contained shard pairs", not only are they intrinsic/extrinsic, but the intrinsic shard also allows you to perform the extrinsic one, making them additive. Virtuosity gives you the power to Invent, Cultivation lets you gain something which you can Endow to another, gaining more Autonomy lets you establish Dominion over others, and being Valorous demonstrates Honor to others.Virtuosity gives you the power to Invent, Cultivation gives you the of something lets you Endow it to another, gaining more Autonomy lets you establish Dominion over others, and being Valorous demonstrates Honor to others. On the other hand, the "edge shard pairs" are subtractive in nature. When you lose your Reasoning, all you have left is your own Whimsy. When you stop Ruining things, they are left Preserved. When you lose your Mercy for others, you're only left with your own Hatred (Odium). When you lose your Devotion to helping others, you are left with only your own Ambition to help yourself. I updated my main post with this new "additive/subtractive" idea!

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