Tempus

Nice to meet you.

The fact that Szeth is the exact opposite in some ways and exact same in others of the ideals the Skybreakers represent is exactly the point. Szeth has a broken personality, went through a recently traumatic emotional experience (learning he was named truthless for no reason), and has been presented with a splinter to form a Nahel bond with (looking at you, big black!). The nature of his personality and the part that requires repair is precisely suited to the Skybreakers.

It's been a few weeks for me - I should consider sending another message soon, perhaps.

The attributes are absolutely important. It would not be incorrect to sum up the Stormlight Archive so far as "People who are emotionally broken gain magic powers based on their brokenness, and attempt to repair themselves." Forget all the cool plotting, that is very much the heart of the books.

The personalities listed are associated with the various essences in the Ars Arcanum, which in turn are associated each with a Herald and order of Knights Radiant. The idea here was to predict who would be in what order by personality. Since many orders were revealed in Words of Radiance, it's a little moot.

Post WoR, we've got something more like... Protecting, Leading - Kaladin Just, Confident - Szeth Brave, Obedient - Adolin (Dueling, obedient to his father even with his father says not to duel) Loving, Healing - Lift Learned, Giving - Renarin Creative, Honest - Shallan Wise, Careful - Jasnah Resolute, Builder - The Person Who Calls Themselves Taln™ or the unknown person of import Dependable, Resourceful - The Person Who Calls Themselves Taln™ or the unknown person of import Pious, Guiding - Dalinar The ones without descriptions are confirmed to that corresponding order of Knights Radiant. The other unknown person of import may or may not be Eshonai. It's suspected that the person who calls themselves Taln would be connected with the Stonewards (Dependable, Resourceful). Note that the whole premise of the Knights Radiant qualities is that people who can surgebind are broken, and before they live up to their ideals they are often in some ways the opposite of the expected qualities, or rejecting them. Like how when Kaladin got the slave brand he began to reject responsibility, but in the end couldn't be that person and ended up taking care of Bridge 4. Or how Shallan became the exact opposite of honest. Or how Dalinar didn't want to guide the other highprinces, and didn't want to acknowledge his visions, and made a right mess of things avoiding it. Etc.

Anytime you had a rebellion, the rebels would turn into a bunch of powerful magic users! Geopolitical instability all over. That's great. You'd have whole orders of people who would live their lives doing nothing just so that they could sacrifice a sufficiently large amount of investiture on one big thing at the end. You'd probably have government sponsored welfare houses in exchange for performing great feats and other major socialist systems to take best advantage of supporting an entire class of people that attempt to do nothing for the longest time possible.

WoB is a little bit divided here. He mentions a couple times that the pool in Elantris is similar to the Well of Ascension, and that it is associated with Devotion. He also mentions the pool 'is not what we think it is'. So either our concept of shardpools is wrong, or he misspoke, or the shattering had some effect on the shardpool, or it's not actually a shardpool, just something similar.

Yay, Kurk has a quote that supports me! Upvotes for everyone in the thread! Incidentally, that WoB supports a lot of things I've suspected about the cognitive realm. Fantastic. My theories are shaping up nicely. Now THAT is curious. We know that shardic investiture is tied to symbols, in some as yet unknown way. Would we see symbols similar to the surge symbols, or to some of the many, many other magic symbols we've seen in the cosmere?

Okay people, let's go. You're a Shard. What's your Intent, and what have you invested yourself in? I'm gonna call myself as Charisma. As Charisma, I would be invested in clothes. The people who would be invested would be tailors, and the clothes they made would grant the wearer special powers. The strength of the clothes would depend upon how trendy the style was at the time - cognitive consensus. You'd have fashion factions going around, trying to improve the trendiness of their style in order to increase their power. You'd have subculture fashions, occupying specific niches like goth-emo or victorian and keeping those niches alive by virtue of the usefulness of their abilities. The cognitive attachment of royalty to ball gowns and suits would make royal clothes exceptionally powerful. Military uniforms, and uniforms in general would have strong abilities based off their common and prevalent cognitive associations.

It may also be Nazh, the creator of a variety of maps, and the mysterious retriever of things which frankly would be pretty darn hard to get (like Shallan's sunken drawings). I also lean towards Khriss though, I haven't read White Sand but I've heard she is some kind of cultural anthropologist or something of the sort. Seems like the kind of job that lends itself to writing Ars Arcanum.

It's strongly suspected that the big HIIINT is this quote, from Elantris: As for using Aon Tia to worldhop, seems plausible, especially with Earth technology. Calculating the exact distance to the face of an astral body is reasonable simple as far as astrophysics goes, and could have been accomplished during the 19th century sometime with relative ease to a sufficiently intelligent scientist. By late 19th century they were already doing orbital projections and early spectroscopic analysis. The biggest problem would probably be that it's unlikely it goes faster than the speed of light. It could take several years for someone to jump between systems. I wonder if Hoid's early travels used something like that, actually. It would be neat if prior to acquiring feruchemy and knowing about cognitive world hopping he spent time in space travelling at the speed of light, not growing older while hundreds of years passed by each trip (due to relativity).

I have a similar table going on my computer, with a bunch more stuff on it and a bit of a different layout. I'd like to point out some things you may want to attempt to account for. sDNA - You have 'genealogy' listed for the Metallic Arts, but sDNA is important for many systems. On Sel, the geography isn't sufficient, you have to have been living in that location for several generations to get the sDNA. Then even when you leave, it remains in your sDNA (likes the Aonic Dulas, Galladen). Breath seems to be part of everyone's sDNA on Nalthis. sDNA doesn't seem to be an issue with surgebinding at all. Spirit Web Tears - each person has a spirit web as part of their personal spiritual aspect. Strong positive or negative emotional experiences will cause that web to tear, and the tear is required as a conduit for the transfer of investiture in some systems. Known systems that require a tear are Allomantic Snapping, and forming a Nahel Bond. It is possible the Shaod requires a tear as well, as it has similarities to the other tear-based systems. The Dahkor monks may rely on torture to make spirit web tears for those bone protrusions (or it may be incidental - they might just like torture). Gains - the Ars Arcanum of Alloy of Law separates the metallic arts into end-positive, end-neutral, and end-negative systems. It's worthwhile looking into these, and which magic systems fall into which category. Forging, Bloodsealing, ChayShan, Dahkor Monks,Old Magic, Voidbinding and Fabrials are all other magic systems that we've seen that you can take a look at. Various amounts of information available for them. Atium, Lerasium, the Tears of Edgli are all physical objects known to have a direct physical connection to a magic system or a Shard. Shardic Intent is important to the workings of many systems - Brandon has stated the shards have some conscious and deliberate influence in how their investiture can manifest itself in a magic system.

There is a map of Shadesmar (the cognitive realm that corresponds to Roshar) in the Way of Kings. In this map, three expanses are listed in each of the corners (the fourth corner expanse exists but was removed to have a place to put the word 'Shadesmar'). We know that the expanses correspond to various other worlds. It is theorized that because space is empty, there is no 'space' in the cognitive realm (no cognitive presences) and thus the worlds can be walked between, but that's speculation. It is also notable that though the Knights Radiant had the ability to travel within Shadesmar and did so frequently, they passed down almost no indication of worldhopping or other worlds - so there may be more to travel between worlds within the cognitive realm than expected. Here's the article on known facts about Shadesmar, including the map.

Okay, so here is my mysterious question. Hoid uses Feruchemy to decide where he needs to be. Hoid also jumps forward in time (he doesn't live ALL the years). But, Hoid is from Yolen, around the time of the shattering. It's known that many thousands of years passed since the shattering (Desolations are post-shattering, and at least 4500 years old, probably a lot more). Mistborn, however, takes place only a few hundred years prior to Stormlight Archive, though. When exactly did Hoid get Feruchemy? My best guess is that we have a WoB that the Worldsingers and the Terris Worldbringers are not coincidental, and thus at some point when Hoid may or may not have helped found the Terris Worldbringer religion he picked up feruchemy in some unknown manner. Do we have any more details on this, or on his mysterious time hopping?

Here's the exact quote: Note, it was a white sphere, not a yellow one.

Shardless worlds have no magic systems, but are still held by realmatic theory. We've seen one in the short story 'Shadows for Silence'.

That's my assumption as well. Land is full of objects, so it becomes a lot of tiny beads, which act like a play pen full of balls. The ocean is all one big thing, cognitively, so it's all fused together and landish (though you can see a bunch of things inside it!).

I have been going through Emperor's Soul articles. The following articles are confirmed to have every possible piece of information, and should be marked as complete once reviewed. Day One Edit: http://coppermind.net/wiki/Yazad http://coppermind.net/wiki/Ushnaka http://coppermind.net/wiki/Stivient http://coppermind.net/wiki/Nyen http://coppermind.net/wiki/Mulla%27dil Day Two Edit: http://coppermind.net/wiki/Dzhamar http://coppermind.net/wiki/Glory_Faction http://coppermind.net/wiki/Heritage_Faction http://coppermind.net/wiki/Imperial_Seat http://coppermind.net/wiki/MaiPon Day Three Edit: http://coppermind.net/wiki/Teullu http://coppermind.net/wiki/Rose_Empire http://coppermind.net/wiki/Rose_Palace http://coppermind.net/wiki/Frava Day Four Edit: http://coppermind.net/wiki/Soulstamp http://coppermind.net/wiki/Essence_Mark Day Five-Seven Edit: http://coppermind.net/wiki/Forgery Nominated for exemplary - proofed by R'Shara while Weiry looked on with a stern expression

Very good eye. Never saw this at all.

More supporting points for KR being the Mageocracy - Brandon has repeatedly referred to surgebinding, voidbinding, fabrials, and other things as 'systems of magic'. He's even implied heavily that he personally considers each order of Knights Radiant to be a different 'magic system', in the narrative sense. He's talked about his various other books, and basically, anything that is not in the material world and forms a little self-consistent bubble is a magic system. So when Brandon says 'theocracy', he means 'the people who used religion to rule', and when he says 'mageocracy', he's talking about people who used magic systems to rule. During the Desolations, the KR were pretty much the Bastion of humanity, I would be strongly surprised if they didn't rule in one form or another.

We know forgery takes a very small amount of investiture, according to the questions from the sugarhouse signing. We know investiture needs higher quantities to affect other sources of investiture, so I'm gonna lean towards 'Forgery can't replicate investiture'. But the way it works is so unique, it might work. You can't pull a shardblade, but you could say, pull another piece of metal adjacent and temporarily attached to the shardblade to have the same effect. Forgery might work along those lines. One thing I've been thinking about is recursive forgery. There is nothing invested about stamp material, it can be anything. So, it should be possible to make a stamp detailing the making of an essence stamp, and then stamp it into some soulstone. And if the essence stamp you wrote into the alternate history was a stamp that would make you a better stamp and you stamped it, it should recurse. Either this would cause a universe stack overflow, or you would end up with a stamp that approaches the limit of the ideal stamp to do whatever you liked. It would likely not last long (being literally at the line of plausibility, by nature), but you could quickly stamp an impression into some plaster and have yourself a forgery stamp made by forging that when you stamped with it would cause you to be a better forger. I haven't really worked out the details exactly, but by abusing recursiveness you should be able to take forgery to its natural limits.

The pool in Elantris has a WoB that it's "not what we think it is". We have absolutely no confirmation at all on Dominion's shardpool. Honor's shardpool is likely, but not confirmed either. The Purelake is pure, baseless speculation.

Right. The nature of the cognitive realm doesn't have much impact on investiture - it's the other way around. Understanding investiture better may assist us in better predicting the behaviour of the cognitive realm. I'm starting to get some reasonably good ideas about how PRECISELY things like soulcasting, and other strange forms of investiture work. A big stumbling block still is the spiritual realm as well. If we could nail down the nature of the two realms, we could probably figure out investiture just from working backwards through the magics.

No, it's just him being proud of himself. That's very Hoidish.