ROSHtaFARian2.0

Hmmm, I have no thoughts on a possible fourth magic system, but laying things out like this gives me some ideas on what the Old Magic actually was. A lot of people have previously speculated that the Old Magic had something to do with the Nightwatcher perhaps, but with it described here as a cousin to Voidbinding, and with WOR suggesting that Voidbinding is what the Parshendi do once corrupted by the Everstorm in their forms....perhaps the Old Magic was the magic the Parshendi used BEFORE Odium's spren turned them into Voidbringers as part of his cycle of Desolations? We've seen the Parshendi speak of old forms now lost, and some of those are their Voidbringer forms like stormform...but what if some of them are even older than that? Many of us have long assumed the Parshendi predate humanity (and thus Odium) as inhabitants of Roshar, and perhaps the Old Magic refers to a time before humanity....a time when it was the only magic and Parshendi were the only people. And then Odium's influence and investiture altered it, corrupted it, and the Old Magic became Voidbinding, and thus they qualify as 'cousins'.

On a similar note I've actually been speculating that the Dawnshards herald from a time before Roshar. That maybe they're some kind of remnant or artifact from the Tranquiline Halls.

Actually I've just been wondering recently if the Ones Above might be from Taldain. From what little we know publicly, White Sand is one of the earliest chronological cosmere stories and it features Khriss who comes to know even more about the cosmere than Hoid himself, possibly. Given the cosmere timeline and certain other factors from the book, I have wondered if that planet might be the first to achieve space travel (which doesn't mean that they're the only ones that have it by the time of Sixth of Dusk, so it could still be Scadrians even with that being true). Just something I've been thinking about. Although now I want to ask Brandon 'with all other things being equal, which planet's magic system is the easiest to figure out a way to power FTL with'? I believe he mentioned once that all the magic systems had FTL capabilities built into them?

Yeah I really disagree that the phrasing of that post suggests the plague was deliberate. Brandon said it 'was introduced by Worldhoppers' but introduce merely means they were the vector by which Rosharans first encountered the common cold. Its purely a statement of cause and effect. There's nothing in that specific word choice that suggests any kind of intent on the part of the Worldhoppers.

Yeah I read that answer as at the moment, no Vasher can't Awaken things, especially with the 'he's tried but hasn't figured it out'. I think its possible and even likely that he'll figure it out, he just hasn't by the time he shows up in the Stormlight Archive. I'm personally more curious to find out if Vasher will at some point learn how to Surgebind. Either by figuring out and mimicking how Szeth does it (it kinda feels inevitable that their paths will cross at some point) or by forming a spren bond (in many ways he was pseudo bonded to Nightblood for centuries. Ooooh. Nightblood has certain sprenlike qualities, I wonder if there's any way he and Vasher could ever bond the way KRs bond with their spren? What would that even look like?)

We know that Ati was once a good man, altered by his Shard's Intent into the much more malevolent Ruin. Have there been any instances where the reverse happened with a Shardholder? Ie, a mostly amoral Shardholder like Rayse or Bavadin who was altered by their Shard's Intent to being much more benevolent?

Perhaps the difference is that the Cognitive Shadow of a Shard isn't the same as a that of a person like Kelsier, because its that mix of an original human mind plus a Shard's Intent? Like the Shadow is more of the Shard than of the human that held it? Another possibility for why the Stormfather seems nothing like Tanavast is there was one topic I saw that speculated that perhaps Tanavast the human survived the Splintering of Honor and the recordings he made for Dalinar were made after he Splintered but before he died? Obviously total speculation, but if a holder is able to survive after his Shard is gone, even for a time, the question is - does he revert to his original personality, unaltered by the Shard's Intent? That could explain a lot of discrepancies between how we've seen Tanavast and the Stormfather portrayed.

We also do have WOB that White Sand is set pretty early on in the cosmere, possibly even before Elantris from what I recall.

Actually I don't believe we have any idea how the distribution of the Shards happened. We know that Ati was a good man before he took Ruin, yes, but that doesn't mean necessarily that he CHOSE Ruin. We also know that Hoid turned down a Shard, but again, all we can conclude from these things is that the original Shardholders had a degree of choice in whether or not they took up a Shard, much the same as Sazed did. That doesn't mean however that they got to take their pick of the sixteen options. Perhaps it was a location thing, like the Shard they were closest too, or perhaps someone like Frost approached them with a specific Shard. We just don't have enough information to know there.

The two most likely guesses I have for unknown Shards are a Shard called either Invention or Inspiration, and a Shard called Judgment. I'm also hoping for a Revolution Shard, the force of change. That could have a lot of interesting possibilities.

Well Brandon has always said that you could do some really cool things with Lerasium if you know what you were doing (and who knows what they're doing more than Hoid? Well possibly Khriss and Frost, but you know what I mean). But given how much Ruin and Preservation paralleled each other in every way, it always seemed likely to me that their magic systems were similarly paralleled. By which I mean, since we know hemalurgy can be used to essentially hack any other Shard's magic system, on any planet, it always seemed to me that there had to be some mechanism by which Preservation's magic could be used to do the same. So if lerasium essentially makes Mistborns by rewriting the spiritual DNA of whoever burns it to reconfigure that person's spiritual aspect to be enough in tune with Preservation's Investiture to allow allomancy, theoretically it always seemed likely to me that with enough know-how, lerasium could be used to rewrite a person's spiritual DNA to allow access to any other Investiture too. I was always thinking of it in terms of allomancy, but feruchemy is of Preservation too, so perhaps the means to accomplish that is using lerasium as a metalmind? And by doing so, Hoid has access to every Shardworld's magic, or can use the magic of other worlds (like Yolish Lightweaving) regardless of the planet he's on? On a related note....I wonder how many other worldhoppers have access to lerasium and atium? We all spent a lot of time trying to figure out if and how a certain Elantrian could use AonDor on Roshar....could an Elantrian use lerasium to make it easier to use AonDor on other Shardworlds?

Well what if the difference is simply that because Cultivation is still alive, the relationship between Cultivation and the Nightwatcher is whatever the relationship was between the Stormfather and Honor was before Honor was Splintered. We have plenty of evidence to suggest that the Stormfather existed in some fashion long before Honor died, so that's a possibility right?

Hmmm, good points. What about if the nanobots were in the Awakener's own body? The tricky part is figuring out some sort of Cognitive workaround to view all the nanobots as one thing to Awaken. If the nanobots' Identity is all linked in the Awakener's mind, like if he viewed them all as parts of the same whole to Command, and it was all the same command like 'Heal my flesh', that could work, right? I mean, theoretically Awakeners with that level of scientific knowledge would be aware of molecules, atoms and subatomic particles. So any Awakener who was able to still Awaken a piece of cloth by viewing it as one singular entity rather than a collection of atoms could theoretically apply that same mindset to the nanotechnology within his own body, being aware that it was a collection of smaller parts but still for the purposes of Awakening viewing the entire nanotech mechanism as one singular Cognitive entity. I'm basing all of this in large part on how Vasher was able to use his own cognitive view of self to change his shape. Training one's self to change how you view Cognitive aspects seems to be the key to unlocking a great many of the higher implications of Awakening.

So this randomly occurred to me today, and I thought I'd just throw it out there to see what all the more scientifically inclined board members thought of it. Say two or three hundred years after Warbreaker, Nalthis develops nanotechnology. Tiny machines inserted directly into the bloodstream, maybe even fashioned in humanoid shape for Cognitive purposes....could an Awakener with sufficient Breaths then give Commands directly to the nanobots? What Investiture mechanism would be required to see all the nanobots in a person's body as one thing for purposes of a Command, but still allow them to operate as individual machines fulfilling that Command through multiple parts of a person's body simultaneously? I can't quite work out how that would work, but I feel pretty confident there's a way to make it happen. And if it could, the implications could be vast for the future of Nalthian technology and science. Or alternatively, given that Awakening is easier with organic materials, what about giving Commands to stem cells?

Hmmm, I could see that. I think for me, the difference is I always saw things like Ruin and Preservation's creation of humans as being more influenced by their Shardholders rather than their Shard Intents.

Hmm, I'm not sure why you think that doesn't track? I agree that whatever Adonalsium was, he/it could create humans, given that individual (or pairs of) Shards made up of its power are capable of that. I'm just arguing the chicken or the egg - aka which came first. Just because Adonalsium could create humans doesn't necessarily mean it DID (or at least not ALL humans, such as Hoid's branch of humanity). After all, we know there's at least something out there referred to as the God Beyond, and an entity like that could have created Hoid's version of humanity or whatever sentients plotted against Adonalsium. Totally valid and understandable if you don't subscribe to that particular theory, I'm just curious what about it you'd find to be inconsistent worldbuilding.

Well there's also the fact that Brandon's books (and the worlds and magic systems contained within) are VERY visually oriented. There are a lot of fantasy books out where the worlds are standard Western European derivatives, or the magic is something very subtle or literary-oriented. Brandon's worlds and magics are crafted with spectacle in mind - thus they'd translate well onto the big screen. Hence a lot of people's excitement for potential movies is just as simple as wanting to see Vin spinning through the mist shrouded air in MISTBORN, Awakeners letting loose in WARBREAKER, Windrunners and Soulcasters in combat in THE STORMLIGHT ARCHIVE. Sure, elements of story might be lost in the translation and the movies might not ever be as good as the books, but for everyone whose already read and enjoyed the books and can always continue to do so regardless of how good or bad the movies end up being, they can still find elements of the visual spectacle to enjoy despite that. Edited: Realized king of nowhere said much the same thing, but well, our point stands! LOL.

This assumes that Adonalsium was both 1) good and 2) the creator of original humanity. We know Adonalsium is equatable to the power of creation, but that doesn't necessarily mean that Adonalsium was actually a benevolent entity that created Hoid's version of humanity. (Admittedly, I approach this from the stance of someone whose pet theory is that Adonalsium was a human construct, the result of Hoid's contemporaries trying to achieve godhood/tap the powers of creation, and its adversaries were a group who opposed its creation on the grounds that such powers were not meant for men to wield.)

My problem with Moogle's reasoning is that it requires assumptions about the Bondsmith's based on what we know of other Orders like Windrunners and Lightweavers. Moogle reasons that because we know from Windrunners and Lightweavers that an Order only bonds one type of spren, and those spren are made up of a percent of Honor and a percent of Cultivation, that Bondsmiths can not bond both the Stormfather and the Nightwatcher, and instead its more likely that the three Bondsmiths share the Stormfather. The problem as I see it, is pretty much the only thing we DO know for sure about the Bondsmiths is that they differ greatly from the other Orders. There are only three Bondsmiths at a time, the only spren bonded to a Bondsmith thus far is the Stormfather, a godspren, and he for whatever reason survived the Recreance intact, etc. So given that we definitively know that the Bondsmiths are unique among the Ten Orders, I don't think we can argue against a theory like 'the three Bondsmiths each bond either the Stormfather, the Nightwatcher, or the Protector' based solely on our knowledge of other Orders. Not saying I think that theory is correct, necessarily, just that the logic being used to defeat it takes unwarranted assumptions for granted, IMO.

Re: Gravity and its affect on time. I agree its unlikely any Surgebinder could use the Gravity surge to achieve the same kind of temporal affects that cadmium and bendalloy mistings achieve. However, I am curious to find out if Lashings could be used to disrupt mistings' time bubbles, with the alteration of the mistings' gravity throwing off their own temporal manipulations. Even just a little disruption could be a big deal to a misting who'd gone their whole life gaining expertise in using their time bubbles so much they're practically instinctual. Someone like Wax who's used to using his time bubble in combat comes up against a Windrunner like Kaladin who uses the Gravity surge against him, and suddenly his time bubble isn't slowing things down as much as he's used to or was expecting....could be quite problematic.

Its possible one of them is Skyward, which I've only seen mentioned once but he described as a YA cosmere novel on a new world we hadn't seen yet. I'm fairly certain this is not the same thing as Dark One, which has been on his list in one form or another for years, and the mention of Skyward was only last year, from what I recall. Around the same time, he described somewhere (maybe a Writing Excuses?) a new cosmere world he was developing at the moment - I can't remember the details but it was something about the physical laws governing electricity worked differently on that world, and the whole air carried a charge which had something to do with the magic of that world....I don't know. Both that world and Skyward were only mentioned once, and not at the same time, but I always assumed that world was the basis for Skyward both because the name felt like it tied in and the world felt more sci-fi ish than most cosmere novels, and because they were both mentioned around the same time.

I'm assuming this is it! http://www.tor.com/blogs/2014/12/mistborn-alloy-of-law-sequels

But if the Shard on Ashyn was the Shard who just wants to hide and survive, it could perhaps hide in the same system as Odium as long as it kept its head down. I have a theory that the disease-based magic of that world could play into that. A magic system that encourages people to get sick could easily double as a kind of magical population control, and it keeps the focus of scientific and technological development on life sciences rather than physical. It almost seems like a magic system perfectly tailored towards keeping a world's population from growing too large while keeping their attention away from things like expanding outwards past their own planet. (I believe Ashyn is supposed to be pretty far along on the technology scale, similar to our own world, but obviously it doesn't look like they're sending out probes to the nearby planets in their star system).

Its worth pointing out that all that confirms is that burning atium isn't involved in worldhopping, not that atium is not involved, either feruchemically or perhaps in whatever manner the southern continent makes use of metals. Brandon saw some reason for laughing and saying good question. Could have been a 'so close' thing - as in, atium had successfully been identified as a component in Scadrian worldhopping, but the narrow focus of the question (burning it) had put the person on the wrong track.

Oh, no, I know that. If he does ever answer this question, I'm more looking to his reaction to the question itself for clues, as I'm working on a theory that Braize was formerly known as Yolen.