BlackYeti

I agree with most of what you've put here, but there are a couple of things that need clarification. The name of the species is actually the listeners (note that this name is not capitalised; in the same way that you wouldn't capitalise the name of any other species). The Parshendi is the name of the nation of listeners on the Shattered Plains (hence Parshendi is capitalised). Mateform is a specialisation: other forms are capable of mating, however, the vast majority are completely asexual.

Yes, I would imagine it does have some something to do with his killing of a 6-year-old child. I imagine that most people would feel shame if they did that.

I'm pretty sure that it's saying that Jasnah had searched for Urithiru, not that she had actually searched in Urithiru. So I don't think she's there yet. I think that it would have made a big deal out of her arrival.

It's got to be Kelsier writing the book, doesn't it? Just reading through the epigraphs and imagining him writing them, it's spooky how much of it fits. Disclaimer: I don't actually think that it's him, I'm just very surprised that I haven't seen anyone proposing him yet. But if it somehow does turn out to be him, I reserve the right to say: "I told you so!"

Are you serious? I honestly don't see how anyone could think that. Moash, by comparison, tried to kill two men. That somehow makes him just as bad, or worse, than Dilaf?

Aha, so it's Hatham who's going to be invading Scadrial then.

I think your logic is flawed here. Darkeyed women do indeed wear gloves, however, Vorin society is structured on the principle that women are only allowed to take jobs that do not require two hands to perform. If the gloves were a loophole, then women would not be barred from any job. Instead, they wear gloves, only because it is impractical for them not to. Moreover, given the standards of hygiene that we saw Lirin insist upon in Kaladin's flashback chapters, do you really think that he would allow his apprentice to wear a glove? The only problem with that argument there is that there are not really any characters from Roshar that have names that we would expect to see in real life, so I suppose you're right on a technicality. However, it in no way makes for a convincing argument. I would actually find an argument that the terrestrial nature of the name Mara implies that he/she will be a worldhopper to be far more convincing.

The problem with Ishar being the person who broke the bond is that the Heralds don't themselves bond spren, but rather get their powers from the Honourblades. I think a more important question than "who broke Honour's bond?" would be "what caused the Recreance in the first place?" This theory gives us a mechanism for how Honour's death happened, but it does nothing to account for what lead up to it.

When reading chapter 4, I noticed the Stormfather make a very suspicious claim: that Dalinar was the first person to bind him in millennia. Why is this suspicious? This would mean that Radiants were bonding him before the Recreance, however, the Stormfather couldn't have existed back then as we know him since he is Tanavast's Cognitive Shadow fused with the spren that previously governed the Highstorms, and we know that Honour was alive during the Recreance since he was able to send Dalinar a vision of it from his memories. How then could he have been bound millennia ago? What if the Bondsmiths didn't bond the spren of the Highstorms in the past? What if they instead bonded Honour himself? The Shards of Adonalsium are, after all, technically spren, so is there a reason that they couldn't be bonded the way "normal" spren are bonded? Could the reason for Honour's death actually be the same reason as the death of the other Radiant spren? Bondsmiths never received Shardblades, so his death couldn't manifest in the same way as "normal" spren. Also, unlike "normal" spren, Honour had a Vessel: Tanavast. When the Radiant breaks their Oaths, the spren's mind dies; in Honour's case, could this not manifest as the separation of the Vessel from the power and the Splintering of said power? This would explain something that has been at the back of my mind for a while. The Bondsmiths are supposedly the Order closest to Honour, and yet the spren of the Highstorms predates the arrival of the Shards on Roshar, and is thus presumably of Adonalsium and therefore no closer to Honour than to any of the other Shards. Why would the Order closest to Honour bond a spren unrelated to Honour? But what could be closer to Honour than Honour? This would also give extra meaning to the Stormfathers claim at the end of Words of Radiance: "I WILL NOT LET MYSELF BE BOUND IN SUCH A WAY AS TO KILL ME!" If this theory is true, he's already been killed once already. When Dalinar was unable to get the Ardents to marry him to Navani, he went over their heads and sought a higher authority, the Stormfather. Could Brandon be foreshadowing the temperament of the Bondsmiths as a whole here? They couldn't get any "normal" spren to bond them, so they went over their heads and bonded the ultimate authority: the Shard of Honour.

But this is Roshar, why would we assume that it's the same there? I seem to recall that when Brandon first started writing Mistborn, people initially assumed Vin to be male due to her name, which is why he made certain to use female pronouns for her early on. In the Way of Kings Prime, Kalladin was called Merrin, which most people thought sounded feminine. I don't think we can really use the name by itself as an indicator of gender.

No, because she doesn't consider them to be gods. I don't consider the computer with which I'm responding to this to be a god, but I accept that it exists. However, if you were to show it to someone who lived centuries ago, they'd likely end up worshipping it as such. I am therefore an atheist with regards to my computer, just as Jasnah is in regards to the Shards.

She's already addressed this: There is therefore no contradiction in her beliefs with what we know about Honour.

Is there a reason why people are assuming Mara to be female? From what I can see, there is only one reference to Mara in the text ("Unless he assumes Mara can take over after just a few years of apprenticeship."), and there's nothing in there to suggest Mara's gender. As you've pointed out, it would be impractical for a woman to be a surgeon in Vorin society, and I'm pretty sure that it would go against their gender roles as a result. The logical assumption then would be that Mara is male, wouldn't it?

No it isn't! That's what it was millennia ago, but it apparently hasn't been that since the Recreance. It isn't that now. It remains to be seen whether it will become that again. Currently, it is a de facto Alethi city, much as the Shattered Plains were a de facto Alethi province, as everyone currently in Urithiru accepts that to be the case. The situation will certainly change, but as it stands, Dalinar is certainly usurping Elhokar's authority (not that that's a bad thing given the situation). I have to wonder what the Stormfather's reaction to that will be since Dalinar vowed that he would never do that, and the Stormfather seems to be somewhat particular about oaths.

I disagree with this. My father once ran 107 miles in 24 hours; 90 miles in 3 days, by comparison, doesn't really sound that impressive to me.

I don't think it would be a long term problem, but I doubt anyone's going to take him seriously enough to bother reading it in the sort term. He's a shash branded slave who just punched a Brightlord, and now he's claiming to have the support of one of the most powerful men in the world. He'd be regarded as insane, why would they bother to check any document that he produced, at least initially?

Yes, but unless I've missed something, she's not in the room. Could she get there faster than the rest of Roshone's guards?

I agree that that one guard wouldn't be a problem for Kaladin, but I'm sure that Roshone has others. Without Stormlight, Kaladin would be at a major disadvantage against a group, especially if he's trying to avoid hurting them. And the problem with paperwork, who's nearby who's in the room that could actually read it? The only person I can think of is Hesina, and, for obvious reasons, she might not be trusted on that matter.

I'm not sure how much good something like that would do him to be honest. From the perspective of Roshone's guards, Kaladin's just a dangerous deserter/slave who's attacking their Brightlord. Even if they were able to read, they wouldn't wait to check such a document: they'd immediately attack Kaladin, and wouldn't be concerned whether they killed or injured him. At this point, Kaladin's only options are to fight them or to summon Syl.

Hmm, I would be very wary about using this as evidence to base a theory on. The listeners clearly have their own historical narrative that they’ve developed, and the thing about historical narratives is… actually, I’ll let Jasnah explain: “To many, writing a history is not about truth, but about presenting the most flattering picture of themselves and their motives.” Past books have shown that this kind of in world information is often wrong: e.g. just how much of what Kelsier told Vin about Allomancy actually turned out to be correct? So I view this source extremely sceptically. To add to this, we are talking about ancient history here, which is extraordinarily vague and imprecise, and incorporates a lot of guess work. Moreover, we’re using that history to draw conclusions about an entirely different subject which is yet another potential source of errors. If we were simply developing a theory pertaining to Rosharan history, then it would be wrong to ignore this, but to use that theory as a stepping-stone for this topic is past where I would draw the line. This is why I made the decision to omit the history element from the topic. You raise a very good point here which I hadn’t considered, and I will concede that it does weaken my argument. I do, however, still disagree with your interpretation of “of [insert Shard name]”, and I have a counter argument for you: I think you’re overlooking the full implications of Haemalurgy. Haemalurgy works by splicing part of one person’s Spiritweb (Investiture) onto another’s, it does this using Ruins power, however, the Investiture that is transferred is not necessarily of Ruin. Allomancers have greater connection to Preservation than non-Allomancers, therefore it follows that when spiking Allomancy into someone, you are spiking in Preservation’s Investiture to draw them closer to Preservation. And by extension, if you were to spike sand mastery into someone, you would be spiking in Autonomy’s Investiture to draw them closer to Autonomy. Thus counter-intuitively, Ruin’s power is being used to draw the person closer to a different Shard. Now consider this WoB from the Hero of Ages Chapter 39 Annotation: This explicitly states that kandra have extra Preservation being added, which, I feel should explain why kandra are “of Preservation”. The question is though, how did Brandon interpret it for the purposes of that question: I could totally imagine him doing an Aes Sedai type word play to send us down a theoretical cul-de-sac (anyone else remember that anti-Andonalsium force?) So the idea that I’ve been working with for listener-spren bonds (voidspren bonds excluded), is that prior to the arrival of the Shards they would have bonded Adonalsium spren, since of course there wouldn’t have been any other types of spren to bond. When Honour and Cultivation arrived on Roshar, they possibly might have adapted to bond Cultivation spren, but not spren of Honour due to that WoB, which we’ve just established might not be as good as I had assumed. So, maybe we can add Honour back in there? I am however, still not convinced that the listeners ever had Forms of Power prior to bonding the voidspren. How would the timeline work? Odium comes to the Rosharan system an Invests in Roshar forming the Unmade, which go on to corrupt other spren. In response Honour gives the Honourblades to the Heralds and forms the Oathpact. The spren copy the Honourblades and start bonding humans (Supposedly the great betrayal of the spren). At which point in this sequence did the listeners first start bonding the voidspren? The obvious answer is between (1) and (2), meaning that the Oathpact was a retaliatory move on Honour’s part. Yet this contradicts the listener narrative that the spren betrayed them (another part of the reason why I distrust this narrative). Of course, it would be simple to come up with a way for it to have come after (3), but at this point it’s all just guesswork. Interestingly though, if the listeners did have Forms of Power from other spren prior to the Oathpact, I don’t think that it would actually contradict what’s in my framework. I didn’t include the listener non-void forms for a number of minor reasons, and if I had they would have had their own section, but that’s because I was classifying by Shardic Composition and as such it would have been a rather arbitrary distinction. A different method of classification could unify the two while still following the same principles that I am laying out. So I’m not disagreeing that the Voidbringer forms and non-Void forms are related: at some point all of the magics are and any attempt to classify them will run into these kinds of problems. Now this is the most experimental part of my theory, I will admit part of this comes from my trying to break things to see what falls out, so it wouldn’t surprise me at all if I turn out to be wrong here. That being said, I do think that this is a reasonable argument in its own right. If you’ve read my, now debunked, theory on Cognitive Surgebinding, you’ll have realised that I’ve spent a long time staring at and analysing these charts (I’ve practically got them memorised at this point), so, yes I have factored the similarity between them into the theory. I’m proposing that this is caused by the involvement of Honour in both magics. One of the things that I keep coming back to is the rigid structure that Honour imposes on the magics, and this is one of the key examples of this structure. I apologise if I didn’t make that clear enough in the OP. (I’m not arguing that Honour is responsible the significance of the number 10 on the magics though, that I believe is determined by the planet itself). Except that I disagree that Haemalurgy is similar to the other two Metallic Arts. While it can grant the same powers as Allomancy and Feruchemy, that is merely a function of its true power of splicing part of one person’s Spiritweb onto another’s. So it is also able to grant the powers of many other magics, as well as other things that aren’t even magical in nature (e.g. physical strength). So is it also a very similar thing to the other magics, such as my earlier example of sand mastery? More importantly, the other two metallic arts do not go about modifying the Spiritweb at all (save perhaps for the Spiritual quadrant of Feruchemy, and even that’s temporary). So I’d say that the powers are altogether very different. On Initiation, I don’t think that we disagree on the points that you think we do. On your claim that it’s not when you get the magic, I do agree. I’d actually define it more precisely as a change to a person’s Investiture, typically through the Spiritweb, that increases the Connection to a Shard (or Shards) which grants the person potential access to the magic. But Initiation is not the only thing that needs to happen in order for the person to use the magic. I’m sorry to be pedantic, but it’s actually described as being tied to family descent. This might sound like it’s saying the same thing, but in the Cosmere it’s actually an important distinction. Saying its genetic suggests that it’s determined by the person’s physical DNA, when really it’s determined by the Spiritweb, both of which get passed down to a person’s children. This is why they can get stolen by Haemalurgy. So with Allomancy and Feruchemy, Initiation is happening at conception. With Haemalurgy though, I’m actually arguing that there is no Initiation (since the magic is never encoded into the Spiritweb), rather than Initiation being universal. The magic is universal, precisely because there is no Initiation. I think that with Initiation on Nalthis, something a bit more complex might be going on. However, this is something that really deserves its own topic, so for the time being I’m not going to be responding to comments on Awakening. I’ll get this written sometime, but I’m not sure when at this point. The problem that I have with it being behaviour is that it would presumably be a primarily Cognitive property, not a Spiritual one. Moreover, your behaviour doesn’t guarantee you a spren, it’s simply a single prerequisite. The reason that I think that it’s the bond is that it’s directly adding Investiture to the person’s Spiritweb. And the reason why you appear to gain access to the magic immediately upon Initiation is that, in the case of Surgebinding, the other conditions that must be satisfied (having a cracked soul, attracting a spren) have to happen before the Initiation occurs. The specific types of gemstones capturing specific types of spren wasn’t my main argument for gemstones as a component of the focus, that was simply an attempt at demonstrating that there is a clear relationship between the two. My main argument was that if you were to consider Soulcasting in isolation from the remainder of the Rosharan magics, you would think that the gemstones were the focus since they seem to be behaving exactly as the focus should. Yet in the other magics it seems to be the spren that are behaving as the focus. As we have seen both spren and gemstones present in every use of every magic that we have seen, I think that it is actually the two in combination with each other instead of one or the other. We keep arguing over Haemalurgy, don’t we? Not every part of the Spiritweb connects to every part of the body, if you were to cut through someone’s limb with a Shardblade, it would cut only the part of the Spiritweb associated with that limb. The bind points of Haemalurgy are the points where the Spiritweb connects to the physical body: if you want to spike a certain attribute out of a person you would need to spike it out of the correct bind point since that is where the Investiture resides. Trying to spike it out of a different point would therefore be a bit like when Vin first burned duralumin and she wasn’t burning any other metals, nothing happened because there was nothing for the duralumin to act on. In the case of Soulcasting, however, I don’t see any other reason for the gemstones to be directing the power. They don’t seem to be containing trapped spren, so what else does that leave? Those were some really excellent questions @Pagerunner; it took a lot of thought, and a lot of time to answer them. I was hoping to address some other comments today, but these actually took up all of my free time, so I’ll have to come back to those tomorrow.

Oh wow, this seems to have generated a far larger reaction than I anticipated it getting: 8 upvotes, a downvote, and 20 responses all in the space of 10 hours! I was hoping to start some discussion with this, and to that extent at least, I seem to have succeeded . There’s a lot that I want to respond to here, and I’m not sure how long it’s going to take me (I’m battling a very unstable internet connection at the moment, that’s actually the reason that I hadn’t posted in almost a month before today). Let’s see how much of this I can get through before I need to go to bed at least. The problem I have here is that, as I understand it, bonds are Spiritual in nature, not Cognitive. One of the functions of the listener-spren bond is that it removes a block from between the listener’s physical and cognitive aspects, similar to the block that the mistwraith have. In fact, we have a WoB that the Parshendi could be given new forms using Haemalurgy, and we know that Haemalurgy functions by stapling part of one person’s soul onto another. Which means that removing the Cognitive block is something that happens on the Spiritual level, not the Cognitive. I completely agree: the Nahel bond is a subset of spren bonds. I did try and be consistent in only using the term Nahel bond when referring to Surgebinding, otherwise calling them spren bonds. I don’t think that this is much of a problem. Remember that Honour set up a system whereby, thousands of years after his death, key individuals would be sent interactive visions of the past. That being the case, I doubt he would have much of a problem adding an exception that would cause the Honourblades to resort to drawing Stormlight from the spheres in the event that they couldn’t establish a conduit to Honour. Or any number of other potential solutions to the problem. My point in bringing up this conduit was to show that they could function without a focus as I had presented the focus. Granted we disagree on what that is, but within the context of the framework I’ve built, it’s a sound argument. Oh, no need to apologise, I actually like it when people disagree with me, it gives us more to talk about . This is based off of the Soulcasters. Granted we haven’t seen a non-fake, non-broken one up close, but it appears that all of the gemstones in the fabrials can and do get replaced. Given that the only way we know to trap spren is in gemstones, unless the gemstones added to the Soulcaster have spren in them, there can’t be any spren trapped in the Soulcaster at all. Shallan never comments on seeing spren in the gemstones of Jasnah’s fake soulcaster, and when Jasnah has to Soulcast Shallan’s blood at the end of The Way of Kings she says that she needs garnet, not a special garnet with a spren. So that was a fake Soulcaster, and that restriction might not exist for Radiant Soulcasting, but would Jasnah settle for a less than perfect replication for her fake? It would be very out of character for her if she did in my opinion. This is an excellent point, and I’ll certainly admit that this aspect of my framework is one of the weakest, simply because we’ve seen so little of the ancient fabrials. My best explanation right now would come down to the focus not simply being the spren, but the gemstones as well. Since all of the Radiant orders could operate the Oathgates (except maybe the Bondsmiths given their lack of Shards), it would need to be the gemstones that are specifying the Transportation effect, and the spren being the final part of the focus that “unlocks” it. While these fabrials are producing the same powers as the Surgebindings, the method of accessing them is different to what we are familiar with. The explanation isn’t without problems certainly, but it’s the best that I can come up with without seeing more of them. Okay, it's now really late here, I'll answer the rest of your questions tomorrow @Pagerunner, and respond to as many other comments as I can too.

For some months now, I’ve been working on creating a framework for all of the magic systems of Roshar that combines everything we know about them and makes predictions for that which we don’t know. This topic is the end result. Since I’m aiming for completeness, there will be things here that are already well understood, as well as things that I haven’t seen proposed before. So, with apologies for the sheer length that it has become, allow me to present my framework. Magics by Shardic Composition Let's start by listing the various Rosharan powers and classifying them by the Shards which power them. Magic Shardic Composition Surgebinding Honour & Cultivation Ancient Fabrials Honour & Cultivation Modern Fabrials Cultivation Old Magic Cultivation Voidbinding Honour & Odium Voidbringer Powers Cultivation & Odium Surgebinding My classification of Surgebinding shouldn't be raising any eyebrows since it is well understood that each type of Radiant spren is some mix of both Honour and Cultivation. However, let's take a moment to consider how the two powers manifest in Surgebinding as this will provide insight into how I've classified the other magics. While there are many different interpretations of honour, they ultimately all come down to the interaction between two or more people: in a universe with only one person, it would be impossible for them to act honourably (nor to act dishonourably), for there would be no one for them to act honourably towards. This duality is reflected, I believe, in Honour's magic. The most obvious example of this would be the necessity to bond spren in order to perform it. Now, you could argue that since the listeners were bonding spren long before the Shards came to Roshar, this would mean that bonding spren is not related to Honour specifically. However, the listener bond is, by its very nature, very different to the Nahel bond; seemingly less a mutually beneficial partnership, and more a natural process. I would contend, therefore, that this is an example of Honour incorporating this aspect of the Rosharan environment into his magic out of necessity. I do not think that this idea of duality is limited only to the bonding of spren, however; I think that it extends even to the way that the powers form. You likely noticed that in my listing of the various magics that there is no system that is entirely of Honour. I think that Honour's nature means that he requires a second Shard to mix his power with in order to form a magic system. In other words, it would not be in his nature to form a magic that is purely his own. Another example of Honour's effect on Surgebinding is in its structure: the way that Surgebinders are divided up precisely into distinct predetermined Radiant Orders based off of their interpretation of honour, and their determination to emulate that ideal. And also, the way that the powers are divided up between the different orders. This is a rigid and inflexible framework, much like the Radiant’s Ideals can be. In short, this is where the "binding" in Surgebinding comes from: Honour is bound to another Shard and the Radiants to their spren, their Orders, and their Ideals. So if Honour provides a structure to Surgebinding, what does Cultivation provide? I think that it is through Cultivation that Surgebinders get to manipulate the Surges. If we look at the spren associated with each of the Shards, Honour's spren are those of emotion, again linking back to human interaction. Cultivation's spren, however, are the spren of nature, so it makes sense that it is Cultivation's power that gives access to the natural Surges. Now, I can imagine it being argued that since on Scadrial, all the magic systems revolve around metals, surely all the magic systems of Roshar should likewise revolve around the Surges, not simply the ones associated with Cultivation. However, I would argue that this is a false analogy: the metals on Scadrial act as a focus, the Surges on Roshar do not. The powers produced by the Metallic Arts (with the exceptions of Allomantic iron, steel, aluminium, and chromium) are not related to metal themselves. Therefore, whilst all of the Rosharan magic systems should share a common focus, it should not necessarily be the case that they all share the Surges. Modern Fabrials Now with that established, it should be obvious why I think that Fabrials are a magic system purely of Cultivation. They lack the rigid structure that I have associated with Honour, and while the spren are still part of the magic, they are trapped inside the gemstones rather than working with the user as you would expect in Honour’s magic. This leaves Cultivation as the only reasonable candidate, which in turn means that they must be utilising the surges in some way. Although, without the rigidity of Honour’s framework, the way they manifest is apparently quite different. Ancient Fabrials The first thing to note here is that these fabrials do not seem to have much in common with modern fabrials, to the point that I suspect that calling them fabrials at all is a misnomer. Modern fabrials all function by trapping a spren in a gemstone, ancient fabrials do not appear to do this. Spren are clearly involved in some way, just as they are in every other magic; we in fact see this in the operation of the Oathgates. In order to activate them, you need a Shardblade, i.e. the physical manifestation of a spren that is part Cultivation and part Honour. Moreover, the spren needs to be alive. This implies that the person operating the Oathgate needs to be working together with the spren, which sounds just like an Honour based magic. This would mean that the ancient fabrials are far more closely related to the Surgebindings than they are to modern fabrials. Which makes sense given that the effects we have seen (Soulcasting, Regrowth, Transportation) appear to be the same as various Surgebindings. In fact, when Nale heals Szeth with one of these ancient fabrials, he actually refers to it as a Surgebinding. Ideally I would compare the operation of the Oathgates to that of other ancient fabrials, unfortunately though, we haven’t really seen enough of these yet to be able to draw anything meaningful from them. The Old Magic This isn’t a magic like others on this list: it's not something that people can perform; instead, it seems to be practised solely by the Nightwatcher, about whom the only things we can really say with confidence are that she is some kind of “mega-spren”, closely related to Cultivation. This would suggest then that the Old Magic can be described as similar to a sapient, self-operating fabrial. I don’t think that there’s much more that can be said at this point without additional information about the Old Magic or the Nightwatcher. Voidbinding This brings us to the only magic system on the list which I believe to be unrelated to Cultivation. If we look at the Voidbinding chart from the back of The Way of Kings, it is immediately obvious that the structure of the magic is the same as Surgebinding. It even has "binding" in its name, hence why I think that it is of Honour. However, if we look at the symbols where, on the Surgebinding chart, the Surges are placed, we see not the symbols for the Surges, but a twisted version of them. Hence I do not think that Voidbinding will be related to the Surges at all, and hence Cultivation has no part in Voidbinding. Voidbringer Powers And finally, we come to the powers that were demonstrated at the end of Words of Radiance by the Voidbringers. Why do I think that this isn't Voidbinding? We have a WoB that we haven't seen Voidbinding yet, but we have seen these powers, therefore they must be something different. Additionally we have the following WoBs: Since the Voidbringers are forms of the Parshendi, and the Parshendi are not of Honour, if my classification of Voidbinding as being of Honour is correct, then the Voidbringers cannot be Voidbinders. So, why do I think that the Voidbringers are related to Cultivation rather than purely of Odium? If we have a look at Dalinar’s vision of the Purelake, we see him looking for a voidspren, which ultimately ends up animating a thunderclast. The voidspren is described to him as: “A spren that doesn’t act like it should”, not as a new type of spren. And apparently this is a result of the spren interacting with Sja-anat, an Unmade. What’s more, the spren they end up chasing has a resemblance to a riverspren, a type of nature spren, which is therefore related to Cultivation. I would propose, therefore, that the Unmade corrupt spren to make voidspren. When the spren was originally of Cultivation they go on to form Voidbringers and thunderclasts and the like. And when the spren was originally of Honour, they will bond to form Voidbinders. On Initiation The first thing to note here is that not all magics require an Initiation in order to be used. Some, such as Haemalurgy, are universal and can be used by anyone. Modern fabrials also seem to fall under this category. In order to use a magic, you need three things: intent, Investiture, and a focus. In the case of fabrials, the Investiture and the focus are both incorporated into the device itself. In other words, the user only needs to provide the intent to use the fabrial in order for it to work. The crucial part here is that the user does not need to access an external source of Investiture themselves: the fabrial does that for them. The Old Magic is not relevant to this discussion since it is restricted to the domain of the Nightwatcher. Also, I don’t think we’ve seen enough of the ancient fabrials yet in order to determine whether they would also be universal or not, so, for the time being, I’ll pass over these two magics. The remaining magics all seem to require Initiation. Khriss’ comments on Initiation in Elantris’ Ars Arcanum suggest that the method of Initiation across all of the magics on any given world is consistent. I think it should be fairly obvious, therefore, that the method of Initiation here is the spren bond. All of the remaining magics utilise a spren bond in some form, and Syl has openly admitted to Kaladin that she is the reason that he is able to Surgebind. On the Rosharan Focus So far I’ve seen theories on the focus claim that it’s either the gemstones, or the spren, or the spren bond. Firstly, I don’t think that it can be the spren bond: I have already demonstrated that it is the method of Initiation and I don’t see how it can be both. Also, as previously noted, not all magics require a spren bond, but all magics require a focus which is consistent across all Rosharan magics, therefore if the spren bond were the focus, this would be a contradiction. Things get interesting when we start to examine the spren and the gemstones as candidates for the focus, however. When examining Soulcasting, the gemstones act exactly as you would expect the focus to, the type of gemstone used determines the result of the transformation. However, this does not appear to be the case with any other magic that we have seen, which should mean that the gemstones can’t be the focus. The spren seem like an ideal candidate for the focus since they are, like the gemstones, present in some capacity in all Rosharan magics. Moreover, as they are capable of changing their form at will, if they are the focus then they should be able to direct the form that the power takes by themselves. And, we saw in the climax to Words of Radiance, Syl was able to accurately determine the weapon that Kalaldin wished her to form without him having to actively communicate it to her, it would follow then, that the Radiant spren could do the same thing to provide their Radiant with the power that they wished to use. And since in modern fabrials, the spren would presumably be trapped in a single form, it would account for why fabrials each have only a single function. There is, however, a problem with using spren as the Rosharan focus, and it is essentially the same problem that we ran into when we tried considering the gemstones as the focus: when considering Soulcasting, it is clearly the gemstones, not the spren that is determining the result of the transformation. So both the spren and the gemstones must be the focus, but neither the spren nor the gemstones can be the focus! To resolve this, I think we’re going to need to take a closer look at what a focus actually is. To start off with, I don’t think that a focus is actually physical. Everything in the Cosmere exists to some extent across all three Realms, so that we might be able to see or interact with it in the Physical Realm does not mean that this is where the magical interaction is happening. If we look at AonDor, the focus like in all Selish magics is shapes, however, an Aon will continue to function even if you were to destroy its physical representation. Indeed Elantrians can draw Aons in the air, which shouldn’t have a physical body at all. And of course, on Nalthis, they use Commands as a focus which, being auditory, likewise shouldn’t have a physical body. I suspect that it is in the Cognitive Realm that these gain a more concrete, not to mention, permanent, form. So, Investiture flows from the Spiritual Realm to the Cognitive Realm where it interacts with the focus and is filtered down into the Physical Realm in the form determined by that focus. But, if the focus is cognitive, then shouldn’t it be possible for it to be something more abstract in nature, such as a function? We know that gemstones and spren have some kind of relationship with each other. Just consider Navani’s notebook: Could it be the case that spren and gemstones are bound together as variables in a cognitive function that is acting as the focus on Roshar? When spren are imprisoned in gemstones, is that what’s really happening, or are they instead being constrained to the same space as part of such a function? This is what I think is happening here: neither the spren nor the gemstone is the focus, but they are both components in a kind of complex focus. How the Honourblades Work So, I’ve been repeatedly coming back to the idea that the spren are involved in some way in every magic on Roshar, yet you might have noticed that the Honourblades are an exception to this. They allow their wielder to Surgebind, but they are not themselves spren. In fact, originally, the Honourblades would power Surgebinding by opening a direct conduit to Honour, similar to how Allomancy opens a conduit to Preservation, meaning that even gemstones wouldn’t be needed to provide Stormlight. Thus, the Heralds might not have needed either part of the focus that I specified above. Does this not contradict my argument for the focus? I don’t think so; I think that the way Honour hacked the magic in the Honourblades means that this isn’t an issue. When Preservation hacked Allomancy so that Vin was able to burn the mists, she no longer needed the metals for Allomancy. And similarly, when Vin became Preservation, she was able to power Allomancy for Elend without him having access to the metals. Based off of this, I think it’s clear that a focus is not required when a Shard directly intervenes like this. One final point: it could perhaps be argued that the Honourblades represent the true form of Surgebinding and that the Nahel bond is the true hack since the spren copied the Honourblades. I disagree with this interpretation, though. I think that the Radiant spren have always been able to form the Nahel bond and create Surgebinders since Honour first Invested in Roshar, they simply didn’t know that they could do this. When Honour hacked the system by creating the Honourblades though, the spren were able to figure out that they had this ability from seeing what the Honourblades could do. TL;DR Given the size and scope of this treatise, it is impossible to easily summarise the entire piece, however, a few key points are as follows: Honour’s influence causes a magic to take on a predefined, rigid structure. Voidbinding does not manipulate the Surges at all. Spren Bonds are the basis for Initiation. Roshar has a complex focus which utilises both spren and gemstones as components. The Honourblades negate the need for a focus.

I got Truthwatcher! It's not the Order that I would have chosen for myself (I would have chosen Elsecaller since my favourite character is Jasnah), but this probably is the most accurate if I'm being honest. I really am most similar to Renarin, which is probably why I don't like him as much. All in all @Tal, excellent job with the quiz, it's by far the best of all the ones that I've seen. Might I suggest making a poll for the results? It would be the most effective way to show how we're all aligned.

If I remember correctly, Brandon mentions this in the annotations. Basically, if that plan had been successful, then it would have resulted in the end of the world the moment Ruin was released from the Well of Ascension since it would have revealed the atium's location to him.

Actually, this isn't limited to those two systems, it's just that other systems have a secondary set of points (and some extend it beyond that as well). They're still organised into sixteen groups though. The exception to this is the Taldain system where both stars each have fourteen points, not sixteen. If someone does want to ask about this, might I suggest asking why Taldain is different?