Vestis Etoris Prime Targ

I think there is more going on with the visions than we know. I'd like to find out more about them before commenting. From what we know of spren cities and spren organization in the cognitive realm, these are primarily made up by the Cryptics who are of Cultivation. Moreover the process of "creating cities", "growing" could theoretically be in line with the intent of 'Cultivation'. Even the Nightwatcher's boons have been theorized (in a different topic) to be an end-neutral form of magic, where the curse compensates in some way for the boon. So the curse could be thought of as an input for 'growing' a crop and the boon could be the final 'harvest' (using cultivation/farming terminology ). I could be wrong but honorspren do not have such an extensive organization in the cognitive realm. In general the sprens seem to be following their Shard's intent within the Cognitive realm.

I understand that investiture is recycled. So any stormlight which is used goes back into the system in one form or another. My theory is more about the Spren themselves. All sprens are splinters of a shard. Sprens like Syl are tiny. Sprens like the Stormfather are bigger. Once they are bonded to a KR along with the oaths, each gains a substantial identity. Their intent becomes individual. If I were to, let us say, remake a shard I would need someone to hold all its splinters together and make them see themselves as parts of a whole. For example in the creation of Harmony, Preservation and Ruin begin to see themselves as parts of a bigger shard called Harmony. In this case one may argue that Preservation and Ruin were in fact pieces (splinters??) of a bigger entity called Harmony. If the KR bond with the spren restricts them to an individual identity (example "I am Syl"), their intent to recreate the bigger shard gets weaker. On a larger scale think in terms of Adonalsium. It used to be a single entity. Once it was divided into 16 shards taken up by 16 separate individuals, their intent for recreating Adonalsium weakened. Now the only way Adonalsium (or at least a new unified entity made up of the 16 shards) can be recreated, is if all the shard holders give up their shards and they are taken up by one holder (might not even be human, since I assume the original Adonalsium wasn't held by a human). So the presence of the KR could be perpetuating the splintering of Honor/Cultivation.

In terms of KR causing desolations, I'm inclined to side with Nalan(if Darkness is indeed Nalan). As a Herald (former Herald??) he has seen many cycles of desolations and has been to both Damnation/Braize and Roshar. It makes little sense that after all this experience he would confuse correlation with causation. More likely that he knows something we (along with the new KR) don't. I believe (and this might be far-fetched) that the heralds could be causing a reversed TLR scenario. In Mistborn, TLR was burning up all the Atium, preventing Ruin from gaining a physical form. Here the KRs bonding spren might be doing the opposite, i.e. weakening Honor. More KR leads to a weaker Honor. This is the secret which caused them to break up and renegade on their bonded spren. The reason behind this (again just a theory) is that each spren is a splinter of a shard (Honor/ Cultivation). With the KR bonding the spren individually and giving them the power to exist in the physical realm, Honor / Cultivation remain splintered. Each of the splinters grows, gains a personality/ individuality and sees itself as separate from the whole. Hence the existence of the KR creates an intent within the splinters to remain splintered, instead of joining together to recreate the shard. The KR are inadvertently undermining the Heralds and upholding the work of Odium.

I agree with the similarity to Allomantic snapping, but if you dig into that, the people snapped by the mists, many of them died. Infact that's why the mists had a scary reputation, because people ended up dead. So snapping at least can create enough damage in the physical/spiritual realm to kill someone. Also in the case of bloodmakers like Wayne, they could go for a few weeks with a runny nose in order to heal a bullet wound in a few minutes. Makes sense that someone could do the same with their soul (I mean a teeny tiny unbraced crack for a few weeks wouldn't really lead anyone to become a homicidal maniac right?? ) Well bummer on the Shardplate theory then. But Kaladin was able to heal a shardblade wound using just stormlight So I think investiture used in a particular way should be able to prevent the shardblades from severing your soul.

Sorry if this has been discussed earlier but I was reading through some old posts in the forums and this came to mind: So we know that the ability to Surgebind manifests when a person develops cracks in their soul. We also know that a Nicrosil ferring is able to store investiture in their metalminds. Would this imply that when they are storing investiture in their metalmind, the Feruchemical nicrosil would be walking around with unbraced cracks in their soul? And when they recover this investiture they are able to brace their soul and make it stronger than normal? Also extending the above, if a Nicro ferring with a 2X braced soul went unprotected into combat with a shardblade wielder, would the blade just bounce off him/her (since shardblades work by severing the soul)? Could this be how Shardplate works, strengthening the soul by wrapping it in a layer of investiture? Essentially Nicrosil compounding = Shardplate I'd like to hear others' views on this.

I dunno if we should take Lasnah/Jaspen lightly...Given what happened with Szeth and Nightblood (which was also mentioned in these forums purely as a joke), we might actually see the above pairing take place (which just for the record would be absolutely hilarious!!)

I'm just surprised this guy hasn't already created a thread to celebrate...I mean he practically predicted the entire (or atleast a large bit of) plot for the 3rd book...He should be in I-just-won-the-ThisCommentHasBeenReportedToTheModeratorsForTryingToGetAwayWithSwearing-Oscar mode right now

Hey Aether, no problem. Like I said, its just a wild extrapolation. Sorry to have caused such a commotion. And thanks for the bit about the name. Its the name of the villain from Nightsword (a Starshield novel by Weis and Hickman). It was an amazing series but they never finished it.

Hi, Thanks for the welcome!! I appreciate that. I know the theory is a (very) long shot. It's just that it seemed to fit everything I've read till now. When I read about Szeth and the fact that Shin stone shamans are responsible for getting the shardblade back after his death, I thought that they must be the keepers of this particular blade. And then I thought about that voidbringer quote "where he claims that "his punishment demanded that they [did not exist]" while his "honour demanded that they did"." His punishment is of course his excommunication from Shin society. This involves him owning a shardblade and being thrown out to serve the world (or at least whoever holds his oathstone). Now I assume that the punishment is a result of Szeth losing honour and, from the quote above, it seems if the voidbringers exist then his honour remains intact. So it seems likely that Szeth personally believes in the existence of Voidbringers. However this runs counter to the general belief of the Shin. They don't believe in Voidbringers and hence hold Shardblades to be horrific instruments which need not exist (since no Voidbringers = No requirement for Shardblade). They are happy to bond with spren and avoid owning shardblades. Szeth on the other hand believes shardblades are a necessary evil in that they will be eventually needed to fight the voidbringers. So he chooses them over the Nahel bond. Hence his personal belief leads him to this punishment (can this be called religious persecution?). So the line, "His punishment demanded that Voidbringers did not exist, but his honour demanded that they did." If the voidbringers did not exist then his punishment was correct since he chose a Shardblade over the Nahel bond. But if voidbringers did exist then his honour remains intact. Of course, extrapolating such a scenario using just two pieces of information is quite a stretch. I suppose it will be best to wait for WoR to see how Szeth's story pans out.

Hi, just putting my two bits into the theorizing. I believe that Szeth being truthless has something to do with him having a Shardblade of his own. In WoK, we see Kaladin and Syl both express revulsion for the Shardblades. Syl even seems glad that Kaladin chose not to take the shardblade which was due to him (which is supposed to be a major turning point for his character). My theory is that Shardblades somehow corrupt a Windrunner's connection with Honor. Hence Windrunners who remain without shardblades are more truthful(?) than others. From WoK we also know that Szeth, and by extension the whole of Shin society, knows the secrets of wind-running. Probably as a society they have a coming-of-age ceremony where young potentials are asked to pass some kind of test to see if they are worthy of being true(?) Windrunners. Part of this test would probably involve a choice to pick up a Shardblade or not. Szeth fails this test and hence gains his status as Truthless. As a consequence he also doesn't have an honorspren bonding to him, marking him as a false(?) Windrunner. Now just to extend this theory some more, it also seems likely that the so-called "Honorblades" are part of the corruption. Probably the Oathpact called upon the Knight Radiants to bear these horrific "Honorblades" and kill with them in order to ensure the survival of their world. However in between the desolations they have to go back and experience all the pain that the victims of the Honorblades went through. That is part of the price they have to pay in order to use something as dangerous and horrific as "Honorblades" to enforce the will of Honor. Possibly Honor himself never intended the use of blades to enforce his will. This is a result of the breaking of honor by Odium on this world. Now of course all of the above could be a really dumb conspiracy theory, but I think what Brandon is leading upto is a critique of using weapons as a means of enforcing the intentions of something so pure as Honor. That would be a really great way for Odium to break him. But yeah I'm pretty new so if this seems to be dumb, then please ignore it. Thanks.