Ari

Thanks for being a good sport about that, I'll start checking with you once I've finished Shadows of Self!

Brandon is specifically talking about untended, Splintered shards here. While Returned have Splinters, their Shard is doing it deliberately. Different category altogether, and I cannot find any archived WoBs about that. We may just need to tweet him and see if he answers at this point, lol. edit: Well, Brandon tweeted back fast. He says that Returned are highly invested beings, but that the investiture itself isn't sapient. I think that means I'm correct that they're different to Seons in this regard, as I specifically asked him about whether Returned get special powers on Roshar. I also put your interpretation first so I wasn't biasing the question or anything.

I thought Hoid said it's easier to play a flute when you have perfect pitch? I suppose you could take that either way. (as "I currently have 2nd heigtening" or "I used to have it and miss it") Are you talking about #38 from this report? That could be interpretted the way you want, although I'd definitely be wary with answers like "you're very close." That can mean that part of the theory is good but there's a mistaken assumption, or it can mean that everything that's been said is correct but they haven't figured out all they need to yet.

Did your friend realise about Hoid yet? hehe

That's actually really important, as otherwise people who are up to date on most books might be tempted to open them if they think they might not relate to the newest released one. Especially as there's usually a few days window between the US and the World English editions being released.

Well, it was the first time a feruchemist had their metalminds embedded into their skin like that- only TLR thought of something similar, but his were technically feruchemical spikes. You could argue it was a moment of great magical significance. I suppose it's possible it also refers to the ten shardworlds, which would be the other significance of ten that can possibly apply to Scadrial.

Going back to this... Autonomy would want to interfere as little as possible to ensure people are free. Once you've achieved freedom for somebody, interfering with them without their consent is definitely violating their autonomy. So far his Shard's intent is the closest to the doctrine we've heard that Frost and the 17th Shard are, to our knowledge, following, that worldhoppers should be observers and police to keep other people from interfering on too large a scale. So he might, for instance, argue that you could divert an asteroid to save a planet that's not capable of diverting celestial bodies, as doing such a thing would preserve their freedom, and they have no ability to choose to divert it themselves. But he certainly wouldn't approve of modifying their behaviour without their knowledge to prevent the spread of a deadly disease. That would be violating their autonomy. It seems to me that a lot of what Hoid wants to do falls a lot closer to the second example I gave than the first- he nudges political events, participates in wars, and appears to be collecting very powerful Invested objects. I'm informed she's from White Sand, which is coming out soon as a multi-part graphic novel.

That Vasher knows who Hoid is does not imply at all that they are working together, or that Hoid even knows Vasher is on Roshar. Now, if we see them suspiciously trying to reach the same overall goals, then that's a different story.

Oh, cool, so there's another Splinterworld like Sel and Roshar out there? Good to know. We should probably also clarify sometime that Survival shard and Space shard aren't the extra one Splintered by Rayse, but I doubt that would be the case. They might function like regular metal blades against the Spikes, similar to how they interact with other Shardblades. Would certainly be interesting to see! Does Marsh actually have access to all the feruchemical and allomantic powers like a Feruchemist Mistborn would, or did Ruin leave out metals like allomantic gold, cadmium, electrum, etc... that he didn't know about, and some of the less useful feruchemical powers? (like Warmth) I thought he simply duplicated all of the practical and known feruchemical and allomantic powers as of the beginning of Era 1.

Just because there's likely to be some "truth" to what Ym believes, doesn't mean that it's literally true. It could end up like one of Sazed's religions, providing critical insight, but not actually having a factual basis like Era 2 Scadrian religions largely seem to. (Although some of them seem to have distorted that basis quite a bit )

That depends on the nature of what sort of Spren Kelsier's cognitive shadow would be, if he hasn't moved on. Engaging in speculation, I would say he'd actually make whoever he bonded with into a Bondsmith.

I think we're probably having a labelling disagreement. You're saying "this thing can happen where some of the investiture from Dominion merges with some of the investiture from Devotion, even though their sentient splinters stay seperate." I don't dispute that it could, although we have no precedent for it and no active evidence. What I'm saying is that that thing you're talking about is not a Shard yet, nor even the corpse of a Shard, (as those can be picked up by a single person) and we don't even know if the process you'd go through to repair a shard would pull the two types of investiture apart again. With so little knowledge about how the repair process works, we don't even know if Dominion and Devotion ever will be made whole again, let alone what happens if their power has merged this way- it could even be that such an intermingling would prevent them from being made whole, at least until you separated the powers. In short, whether you want to call it Servitude or Unity, we have no idea that it actually exists, and no precedent that two Shards' powers can be mixed without the consent of whatever mind holds those powers, whether Splinter or Shard, and no precedent that repairing it would give you a double-Shard the same way Harmony became one. And that's without getting into Shadows of Self spoilers, which could cast doubt onto whether you could even merge Dominion and Devotion.

Honour has a specific reason to have ten. As far as we know other shards don't have subdivided Intents they way he does. Sixteen was built into Scadrial as a consequence of its significance to Adonalsium, although arguably they now have nineteen metals thanks to Sazed's ascension. I think we don't have anything that backs up any additional "magic numbers" showing up. The only two of any significance so far seem to be 16 shards and 10 shardworlds, which keep popping up. I suggest reading about Sazed's rings in HoA, as they are most likely referencing those.

No, compounding is different, as it provides a multiplier through spiritually hacking the power of preservation into multiplying the feruchemical charge in your burned metalmind, if you're a twinborn with access to allomantic and feruchemical powers of the same metal, but that's not what was being discussed. If you have a twinborn that burns two different metals, as per the conversation above, like a Pewter-burning Steelrunner, whose metal is nonetheless versatile enough to help fill their metalminds, there is no compounding factor- they can't "multiply" power in any way. All they can do is store speed at the rate of a pewter-enhanced allomancer, instead of the rate of a normal person. Sure, they get speed a lot faster that way thanks to a boost from preservation, but there's no exponential return the way there is with actual compounding.

We don't know. The Dor is even trickier as it's regionalised within Sel, not just to people on the same planet. We haven't seen many of the spiritually-related powers on screen, and probably won't until Brandon's ready to get into the Cosmere-related implications of them. Also, while you could definitely collect Breaths on Nalthis, arguably you wouldn't be able to use them to Awaken unless you had performed some complex spiritual hackery, or worked out how to spike someone hemalurgically to steal their Awakening. (Likewise, it's possible you wouldn't get the heightenings) You might be able to use them as investiture for other magic systems, but that would probably still require some degree of spiritual hackery. Hoid alludes to not having perfect pitch in the Stormlight Archive, so he suggests it's at least possible for someone from another planet to achieve Heightenings, but who knows exactly how he did it?

Yeah WoR outright says he is Honour's cognitive shadow. Whether that means he is the shadow of the power itself, or of Tanavast, seems up for debate of course, but he's not the shadow of Jezrien, as according to Word of Brandon he was alive as of tWoK, and we presumably haven't seen him die since then.

You're doing the reverse of compounding in fact, using strength from Preservation to fill metalminds, rather than burning full metalminds to get more of a feruchemical charge than you stored. The amount of power gained is still limited to the speed at which you can burn Allomantic metals, so it's definitely not Compounding in any sense of the word. It's more like... twin-filling your metalminds? *shrug*

Yeah, someone was naughty and put their speculation on the Wiki as if it was fact without confirming first. I'm inclined to agree with Eagle that Dominion is based on heirarchical interactions, which would make it a reasonably neat opposing half to Autonomy, which might also help explain how Odium splintered two shards. (by asking for help to "free" the people of Sel from Dominion) I would regard Devotion as being opposed to Dominion in something more akin to the way Preservation and Cultivation would be opposed- they're not actually fully antagonistic, but the intent of their Shards are part in conflict with each other and part not. That last sentence is a huge leap. Sure, a Shard can be repaired according to that WoB. But we have no idea how that would be done. It probably requires active help from people with access to Investiture in the very least, and most likely very specific types of Investiture. And to "seal" the repair you'd still have to have someone pick up the pieces at the end, or at best you'd end up with a great big Splinter of Adonalsium with its own sentience, like a turbo-Stormfather, rather than a Shard. And that's assuming that leaving the power unheld doesn't automatically Splinter it somehow, which could be the implication of what Brandon talks about when he says that unheld Shards result in the power gaining sentience. I just don't see how this process could happen naturally without any hint about it in any of the Selish stories to date, as presumably at least some of the Seons and Skaze would have to start disappearing into this new Shard that was being created.

Yeah so far the only use we've speculated for Identity is that it might let you access another person's metalminds, for tapping if you're a full-fledged Feruchemist, or for Compounding purposes if you're a Twinborn with Feruchemical identity. It's possible it could have other uses as well, for instance, perhaps the property of Identity is what makes someone a Knight Radiant, or the holder of a Seon, so if you could hack with the magical systems enough to somehow "tap" someone else's identity, you could perhaps borrow their Spren or other being of sentient investiture.

Do we have a WoB that Splinters imply sentient investiture? Because Endowment is different to other Shards in that her power hasn't been completely Splintered, (and thus isn't gaining sentience on its own) it's being Splintered deliberately, and those Splinters are being attached to humans to save/resurrect them. The reason Spren, Seons, and Skaze are all sentient, to my understanding, was because there is no mind holding their shard. We do have WoB about sentient investiture being a result of unheld Shards: (question 4) The closest I could find to what you were saying is this one: (last question, #23) I couldn't find anything on Theoryland regarding all Splinters automatically being sentient investiture, but this is the closest, which as I expected, doesn't rule out that the sentience of the Splinter is provided by resurrecting the human host for it. In which case, there isn't any sentient investiture involved, and we would need to know more about how it functions to determine if they'd get any cool Roshar powers. (I would presume they don't until we have info otherwise) I suppose you could argue that this entails a bond to the sentient human holding the Splinter, but I'm really not sure that counts. I thought the whole reason the Nahel bond functions as it does on Roshar is that you have two sentient people (in the case of Spren, one from the cognitive realm and made of Investiture, one from the Physical realm, capable of giving presence to the cognitive being in the Physical realm) co-operating to do magic.

There are way more than 16 Aons, if the magical number is related to them in any way it'd have to be 16 constituent parts. Breath heightenings seem to come in multiples of ten, so as far as we know there's no significance. Just because a number is significant to the Cosmere doesn't mean it's going to show up in every single magic system. I prefer to restrict my speculation to things we can actually get some guidance on in the text. We have WoB that the reason there are ten orders is that Honour had "10 purposes" that naturally subdivided his power. Brandon would have to be deliberately giving us misleading information in WoBs to do that, and so far his approach has just been to RAFO anything that needs to stay even mildly mysterious for cosmere- or plot-related reasons, so I really think we can shoot down the number 16 interacting with Radiants. You're better off thinking about what the Orders and Heralds imply for the Ten Purposes IMO. It is possible for other "surges" to show up, in the sense that people from any other worlds with sentient splinters could form something analogous to the Nahel bond while on Roshar according to a recent WoB asking about Seons. So you could have "Knights of Devotion" and "Knights of Dominion" show up from Sel if they worldhopped with a Seon or a Skaze. That said, as far as we know, only Sel has sentient investiture bearing Splinters, and Endowment has dead humans resurrected with non-sentient Splinters, so unless four of the seven unknown Shards have been Splintered, I don't think we're going to see six new types of Knights showing up.

Isn't it supposed to release next year? And yeah, I totally agree Chaos, this is why you have to push those RAFO questions sometimes- otherwise you miss the great ones that don't get RAFOed.

Nah this sort of thing is exactly what Cosmere Theories is for, as you often need the extra knowledge to theorise well, and it's expected there will be spoilers for everything but the very newest of books here. I could have said "the letter recipient," but assuming you know it's Frost leads to people asking who Frost is if they don't know, and increasing general cosmere literacy. (eg. surprise, there's Dragons!) And yeah, I know literally nothing about Frost myself other than what his reply in WoR reveals, because he's from somewhere in the Dragonsteel/Liar sequence, and knowing his name shouldn't be a big spoiler when Brandon is ready to write those books. It does seem to me that Bavadin would wholeheartedly approve of Frost's attitude, judging from his intent- non-interference is an excellent way to preserve autonomy.

Isn't the breath consumption a weekly thing? And yeah, I totally get that you feel that a body having a divine breath implies a bond. I think we don't have any evidence to suggest that yet and it's pure speculation. We know that Spren and Seons are both sentient investiture and thus have something in common that would allow their bonds with living humans to be fundamentally similar. We do not know that the (to our knowledge) non-sentient splinters of endowment bonded to previously-dead bodies have any similarity, either "bonded to themselves" or in relation to some other living human. You need a good reason to suspect that these splinters either are themselves sentient and bonded to the dead body, (ie. they're not a real resurrection, they're the equivalent of a Seon or Spren piloting a dead body and plundering its memories) or you need a way to shut down the argument that they're different in order to back up the Returned counting as a Knight of Endowment due to "self-bonding". Brandon has confirmed that cases like Dominion and Devotion's power on Sel, and Honour's power on Roshar, lead to the magic gaining sentience. I suppose that doesn't rule out it happening in other places, but so far the closest thing we have is Nightblood, who acts nothing like a Returned.

This explains a lot, especially why he's the only shard on his world. Good question, we're lucky Brandon decided to answer. Hoid's beef with Bavadin is a lot more natural now, it's exactly the same reason he was writing Frost: he believes strongly in interfering with events on Shardworlds to further his agenda. Bavadin would naturally oppose that, so when he gets into Bavadin's sphere of influence for any reason, Hoid has to deal with a hostile Shard. That doesn't rule out personal reasons as well, but it does explain why he'd continue to apply those feelings to a Shard. Brandon is on record (I believe it might even have been on the TWG forum?) as saying not all shards are as neatly opposed as Preservation and Ruin. Whether that means that everything is paired off and the pairs are a bit looser, or whether some shards don't have opposing pairs, is up for speculation. That said, looking at relationships like Cultivation to Preservation, where they would disagree half the time (where cultivation would want to prune excess or evolve something in a way that changed or ruined it) and agree the other half, (where cultivation would want to fortify, feed, or grow something in a way that preserved its essence) I'd be inclined to suggest that some shards have a more complex relationship with the other Shards' intents than simple opposing pairs.