BlackYeti

Actually you can Awaken with only one Breath, just look at the one-Breath Command for creating Lifeless, and there are doubtless other such Commands. In fact technically just giving your Breath to someone with the "my Breath to yours" command is an Awakening. So gaining multiple Breaths is not a requirement. Also, remember the more Breath that you have, the more instinctive it is to Awaken. True Instinctive Awakening is only offered with the Sixth Heightening, but lower Heightenings do bring you part way there. Returned are naturally at the Fifth Heighteing, so I could easily imagine that a Returned could figure it out if they put their mind to it (that's doubtless how they managed to start healing people with their Divine Breath). That being the case, the Five Scholars seem to me like the sort of people who would be able to work it out.

This can't be the case. From chapter 56: Blood has most certainly not been dyed, so Awakening must be able to work with any colour. Returned are confirmed to be able to use any Investiture to sustain themselves, so it makes sense that they could use Stormlight like that.

Typically day can be considered to be the time when the area of the planet that you're on is facing the sun, hence Dayside makes perfect sense: it is always day there, so why not call it that. However it doesn't really make sense to call the the other half Nightside, it is after all, also facing a star. In fact Brandon has described the light level on Darkside as being like twilight, and it sounds more like civil twilight than nautical or astronomical twilight, i.e. not much darker than daylight. So if we were to see it we probably wouldn't describe it as night from the light level either. Therefore, it's probably just called Darkside because it's darker than Dayside, and calling it Nightside wouldn't make sense.

How about: "Love People". To my mind this might potentially be the scariest possible Command that a Type 4 Awakened sword could possibly have.

I've had a similar idea to this, however in my mind it was the surge shared with the Order clockwise, not anticlockwise, to them on the chart. My reason for thinking this was that the Windrunners gained two abilities tied to Gravitation (Basic and Reverse Lashings), but only one to Adhesion (Full Lashing). And similarly the Edgedancers appear to have two abilities tied to Progression (Growth and Regrowth), but only one tied to Abrasion (removing friction). We've not really seen enough of the other Orders abilities to know whether this pattern holds for them yet, but it does seem pretty likely.

@Spoolofwhool, I'd say that the part about not wanting to offend customers by reading in their presence actually does imply that someone in his position typically would be able to read. Nevertheless, @JE19426 is correct, I was conflating two scenes (it's been in my head this way for so long I didn't bother to look it up). From chapter 3: Not really as good as evidence as I'd remembered it being, but I'd say it supports my argument quite well.

This should help.

I think you're overemphasizing just how rigidly the rule against men being literate in Alethkar is enforced. Dalinar is perhaps a bad example here: given how obsessed with honour he is, it's likely he'd be far more concerned with following the rule than other men would perhaps be. Consider the male bookstore owner that Shallan meets in the Way of Kings. If I remember correctly, she notes that whilst he acts like he is illiterate, in reality that would be a pretense for the sake of appearances. He would have to be literate, because it would be completely impractical for a man in his position to be otherwise. The Alethi seem to be, for the most part, extremely concerned with their image, yet equally unconcerned with anything deeper than that.

I don't think they were trying to fake Helaran's death. The idea is that Helaran gave away his Shards because he joined the Skybreakers and thus couldn't use them without hearing the screaming. The fact that the person he gave them to got killed by Kaladin is just a coincidence. It actually makes sense that he would give them to a Veden since he is himself Veden, he'd probably give them to a friend after all. I wouldn't say that it's much more unlikely than if it were Helaran that Kaladin killed. As for the point on cheapening the narrative, that is certainly a real danger here. However I don't think that it necessarily would do so, if the plot line between Shallan and Kaladin is resolved before Helaran returns, for instance, it would then mitigate it to some extent. Also, just because he isn't killed by Kaladin, doesn't necessarily mean that he won't get killed off by some other means.

Szeth

But surely the whole point that @jofwu was making was that it wasn't Helaran who got stabbed in the eye, therefore Helaran is still alive. Hence this isn't an issue with the theory.

From what little we know of the old magic, it doesn't seem to be the sort of magic that people perform, but rather what the Nightwatcher does to people. I think Brandon even said at one point that he wasn't referring to the old magic when he spoke about the 30 magic systems. (I'll see if I can find the quote when I get to my computer.) Edit: Found it:

Yes, I didn't say that it was necessarily impossible, and I was trying to be clear where I was making assumptions. You could be correct here, but for the time being I think it would be very strange. But to clarify one of my points: I didn't say that all of Adonalsium's investiture is contained in the Shards, it obviously isn't since we know there exist Adonalsium spren. I said that most of it is.

I have a few problems with the idea. Firstly, Adonalsium wasn't a Shard: whilst many of the same rules doubtless apply, we do not know if he formed a Perpendicularity (or Perpendicularities) in the first place. Secondly, Adonalsiumm was Shattered, and the Shards which between them form most of his essence then started forming their own Perpendicularities. It seems weird that there would be Perpendicularities to both Adonalsium and the Shards. Thirdly there's this recent WoB: It seems unlikely therefore that Adonalsium has Perpendicularities lying around all over the place. If he has one I'd expect it to be on Yolen, and I'm far from convinced that he has even that.

Hmm. If you assume that Odium and Adonalsium both have Perpendicularities on Roshar, then this could work, but it does beg the question of why Cultivation's Perpendicularity isn't labeled a Nexus. Also I find the idea that Adonalsium has a Perpendicularity on Roshar to be even stranger than the idea that Odium has one. Why do you think he has one?

It certainly doesn't work: if it did then they would be in Roshar's Ocean which we do know can't be the case. As for why there could be three Perpendicularities though: Odium is in the same system and has Invested himself to some degree in Roshar (else there couldn't be Unmade or voidspren), it is conceivable that this level of Investment and proximity is enough to form a Perpendicularity there. As I stated earlier I doubt that this is the case, but it wouldn't shock me if it were to turn out that it is. This conversation has sparked an idea in me though. Why are there three seas marked on the Shadesmar map? It looks like there is just one big ocean, but whoever made it saw fit to divide it into three. Moreover the labels correspond precisely to three of Roshar's Mountain ranges. One on the Horneater Peaks where Cultivation's Perpendicularity is. One on the unnamed mountain range where Urithiru is, and where I suspect Honour's Perpendicularity to be. And one on the Misted Mountains. If it does then turn out that Odium has a Perpendicularity on Roshar, I'm guessing that's where it would be. The Seas would then be "Seas of Investiture", and then that would just leave the Nexuses as unknowns on the map.

Do you have a source for the Purelake being a Pependicularity? I know it's a commonly held theory but I haven't heard that it had been confirmed. I've always been skeptical of it to be honest. Perpendicularities typically form in areas of high altitude (i.e. mountain ranges) which the Purelake obviously isn't. Cultivation's Perpendicularity is in the Horneater Peaks, and as per my theory here, I think that Honour's Perpendicularity is at Urithiru, and I suspect that Odium's Perpendicularity is probably on Braize rather than Roshar. Edit: You know, I think this is my first time being ninja'd @Argent

It's hidden behind the Shadesmar label: we know what it's called due to WoB. Also note that it's the Nexus of Imagination, not Expanse.

Good points, I'll concede these. I should have thought of them myself to be honest: that'll teach me to jump straight in with an idea rather than thinking about them for a while. I just rather liked the idea of a different number for Voidbinding which has nothing to do with the fact that it would have ruled out the main contender for my theory .

Indeed we do not know what the chart is. But I'm sticking with my theory that it's a Cognitive Surgebinding chart for now.

So I just found this new WoB here: Given that we have that old WoB that there aren't 10 Unmade, and given that we think that Odium has been forced to camp out on Braize, I'm proposing that there are in fact going to be 9 Nazgûl Unmade. Now if we look at Voidbinding, the name suggests that the magic is a mix of both Odium and Honour, which suggest that much like Surgebinding there could be multiple Orders. It would make similar sense therefore for there to be 9 Orders of Voidbinding, each of which could then be linked to one of the Unmade similarly to how the Orders of Radiants link to one of the Heralds.

Sure, here you go: Just to briefly explain what I'm doing here. In step 1 I'm finding the mass of the planets using the formula for g (acceleration due to gravity). G is the gravitational constant ( 6.67408 × 10-11 m3 kg-1 s-2 which can be eliminated here since I'm finding a ratio, and thus it does not affect the result), r is the radius, and M the mass. In step 2 I get the volume of the planets. In step 3 I'm finding ρ (the density) using the values from steps 1 & 2. Then finally in step 4 I calculate the ratio and find that Sel's density is 0.8 cosmere standard.

Actually the gravity is determined by the distance from the planet and its mass, the latter of which is itself determined by size and density. Given the much higher size of the planet, the slightly higher gravity means that the density of the planet is actually lower than the cosmere standard. I've done some quick calculations to verify this: Sel does not have a high density.

Well from what I understand, the biggest problem with this is simply the scale. To quote the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: "Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space." (Sorry if it sounds like I'm talking down to you, but that quote is too good to pass up on using.) Ambition was not splintered in the Threnodite system, so the chances for the system to keep running into the Splinters are basically zero (and if were to happen, the chances of the planet Threnody running into the Splinters in the system are similarly low). If you had some mechanism to draw the Splinters back, then maybe, but I don't see how it could happen as you propose.

Ha, it's almost like he was waiting for me to retract what I said earlier. Well done on getting confirmation though, have an upvote .