Ari

We really don't have enough evidence to do anything more than throw out badly-founded guesses. So far we only know for sure about a single type of Spren binding to a person for a single order of Radiants. This might be the rule. It could be that multiple types of Spren can bind with a person to make the same order of Radiant. It could be that the same type of Spren could bind with different people and make different orders of Radiants in doing so. It could be both of those at once, which would mean that any system to the binding of Spren to make radiants is loose at best. I'm inclined to believe that there's at least some relation between the type of Spren and the nature of a person's ability to manipulate Stormlight, (otherwise why would it matter that different spren can be bonded? It could just be for flavour I suppose but it seems a waste if so) but that doesn't necessarily mean that the Spren you bond with determines the order of Radiant you are, even though I'm inclined to believe that's where Brandon is going with this.

Ketek is clearly just an in-world word for a palindrome across several words. Very cool that Brandon put the part titles in palindromes, I honestly hadn't noticed that.

A sword may be traditionally a lethal weapon, but keep in mind that if the length of the blade is dependent on rare materials, you're making a tool that you don't have to worry about physical safety for, and it's designed to cut through inanimate materials, a sword is pretty much an ideal shape for such a tool. I think the nonlethal tool hypothesis is okay, but there's no really good evidence for or against it at this stage. A more likely possibility, I think, is that Shardblades were designed to pass through people but kill creatures of the void, (so they were weapons you could trust to a relative novice, possibly quite useful if you wanted the Radiants to focus on manipulating Stormlight) and Odium corrupted them to kill souls. (or Spren maybe? Neat little guess, that )

It probably helped that as an Allomancer Kelsier was attuned to Preservation already to an extent, and as a Feruchemist Sazed would probably be attuned to both Preservation and Ruin in the same way. Beyond that, we just don't know enough about what it means to be a Shardholder to really hypothesise substantially- although it seems that visiting Preservation's pool was a key step for Vin.

I wasn't saying that Aona was unrelated to Aons, (I figure it's obvious that Aona IS related to Aons) I was saying that we haven't got enough evidence yet for me to feel confident that the shardholder we've dubbed Relief is Aona and not Skai. The only real evidence we have one way or another is the pool's proximity to Elantris, and that's certainly not a death blow to Skai being Relief given that Preservation had no obvious magical influence around his own pool, and it was quite possible for it to be moved using his power.

Yeah, I think just scouting for numbers is a bit useless until we can see some deeper significance in why 16 and 10 have recurred on Scadrial and Roshar. It might have some relevance in later books.

Because we have no idea how to connect those names to anything, all we have is the fact that "Aona" and "Aons" sound kinda similar. It's entirely possible that Relief isn't related to Aons or Elantris at all, although it would be a little coincidental.

Not sure if this is directed at me or not. But.. There are still 16 personalities to the shards. I doubt because Sazed is holding two of them that you would remove the personalities from the count. Removing "Ruin" from Sazed would make Sazed Preservation. But as he has two which are odds at one another, he is neither "Preservation" or "Ruin", thus you would say that the mixture has created a new personality. Or perhaps he just has two competing influences on his original personality, and because they're opposing influences, they cancel out

If we're going for a direct opposite of Odium, I think your best candidate would be something like Philius. (which would be "Love") But I don't think that's likely. Brandon wouldn't need to keep an obvious choice like Unity or Loyalty or Love secret- most likely there's something spoilery in the Almighty's shard name, so it stands to reason it can't be immediately obvious. It would really help if we had a better hang on what magics are influenced by Cultivation and Odium to figure it out, but then again, perhaps we deliberately haven't been given enough information to figure it out for that very reason. As the others have said, not only does the Almighty not need to be a shard with an opposite, he also doesn't need to be Odium's opposite- it's entirely possible that Roshar and another world have traded off half of each others' pairs, or that Rayse/Odium killed his opposite already on Sel.

This question's in the interview- the world that shares a solar system with Roshar is the setting for The Silence Divine.

While Relief seems like a good shard name for the pool we witnessed based on our extremely limited experience with it, I think it's still debatable whether that pool was Aona or Skai.

Hoid's reference to being named for a pretty rock could also be a subtle reference to gold or pyrite, given that the name Midius has a certain resemblance to the name Midas, who turned everything he touched to gold.

Brandon has pretty much said that Preservations number is 16. It was how he tried to send his message to the people about who he is etc. Well, it says in the HoA epigraphs that sixteen has influence beyond what Preservation used it for. And even if that wasn't in the epigraphs, the confirmation that there are 16 shards should really make you think that perhaps there was a deeper reason that preservation chose to use that number- like maybe it shows up in other things than the obvious hints he was giving, so the evidence might stack up even more strongly for a keen observer. It could just be that 16 (and therefore perhaps combinations of 2 * 8 and or 4 * 4) emerges naturally out of some of the properties of the unified magical theory of the Cosmere.

Hey fans! I'm Ari from Brandon's official TWG forums, I thought I'd pop on over to have a look at all your theory work over here and so on. Look forward to talking with you all.