Tempus

I second the point about Desolations being fairly close together, incidentally. There were 99 desolations (101 was dalmations - almost the same thing). Roshar after the Desolations lasted 4500 hundred years. Since human history is about 6k years long, and they were about Bronze age prior to the Knights Radiant, and are currently about early Renaissance or so... The Desolations should be about 300-6000 years max, probably about 1000 or so, or one desolation every decade. Interestingly, this puts Roshar as one of the earliest human colonized planets.

It's a logical connection. If Brandon had meant 'The bonsmiths bond specifically with the Stormfather, Nightwatcher, and Custardworm' (I'm not gonna try and spell it, sorry), then he wouldn't have said similar. What similar implies is that the Bondsmith do require a specific quality in their spren, one which is unusual, and which at least the Stormfather meets, but that is not necessarily the Stormfather himself. It could be, for example, that Bondsmiths only bond with Spren who lead political factions - we know the Stormfather leads the political faction currently calling themselves Honorspren (and that there has been more than one group that tried to be called honorspren in the past). That would correspond well with their creed of uniting and leading. Or it may be they just require spren of unusual power. Or another, as yet unknown possibility. It's also telling that it never says there are 'always exactly three bondsmiths'. It says, in actuality, Since Words of Radiance is a history, it means 'At that time, there were only three bondsmiths, and this was pretty normal for them - they didn't want a lot of members.' This does not mean three is the absolute number, only the current amount and the usual amount. Also telling is the use of the word seditious, which means 'to cause people to rebel against authority'. Which means that the thing about their spren that is specific is likely that the spren held some sort of authority unusual to spren.

Another possibility is savant. We haven't yet seen a Stormlight savant, but Brandon has mentioned that not only is it possible, but that we will see scenarios involving it or approaching it. Perhaps constantly holding Stormlight, until the point you reach Savancy slows aging drastically. Another another possibility is that Stormlight and Feruchemical gold healing are simply retarding the aging process due to the fact you are constantly healed. There are a number of factors that could limit human lifespan, but the usual quoted average optimal lifespan is suggested to be approximately 125 years. We don't know how frequently the Desolations occurred, but someone who would live to 125 years would not be functionally immortal, but would still have been likely to see two or more Desolations, it seems. Another another another possibility is that there is some method of time travel forward, like in Mistborn. We know at least Hoid had a method prior to gaining Allomancy, so there is certainly more than one method. Another another another another possibility is that Harkaylain is a scholar who predicted Desolations like modern Rosharians predict Highstorms - with math. He lived, wrote a book of his predictions, and died. They continue to reference his predictions because of their unprecedented accuracy, making his name a byword. Lastly, Heralds are clearly immortal, which says something interesting about them in light of Kurkistan's assertions.

Brandon has stated that splinters other than Spren could be bonded and on Roshar it would act similar to a Nahel bond. That includes Seons, Skaze, the Unmade, etc... as well as spren. Those are all splinters. We know that Returned are splinters, and that they have the fifth heightening. We know that splinters have their own sentience. We know that the amount of breaths used to Awaken Nightblood was roughly the same amount as required to reach the fifth heightening, and that it was done by a person with the ninth heightening. To all intents and purposes, Nightblood has investiture like a splinter, and sentience like a splinter. He has an intent as well. He is pretty much a splinter, in a sword, with sentience. To call him 'an Endowment based sword spren' would be reasonably accurate. I believe this is what causes Brandon to say that they are the same. However, they are likely not EXACTLY the same - their method of creation is different, the intent is different, and it's likely that Nightblood cannot necessarily do some of the things that shardblades can do (like re/dematerialize, or change form). We also know that he drains breath pretty fast, while Shardblades seem to only drain stormlight at a very small rate.

Seems to me like the easy way to beat a Compounding Spinner would be with feruchemical zinc - mental speed. We don't know if the Mistborn game is correct in the narrative interpretation of spinning, but it certainly could be. In a nutshell, it is as follows: 1. ) Spinner's luck makes events that occur more favourable to the Spinner. This is as the game describes. A compounding spinner would presumably be surrounded by events at 'class 5 - radical/far-fetched', all the time. That begs the question 'What decides what is a good outcome and what is a bad one?'. We know that in realmatics, intent is very important to the interpretation of many realmatic powers (healing, Returned, Commands, Aons, etc..). We also know that objects charged with realmatic sentience often have no ability to judge complex situations beyond their basic intent (Nightblood, Syl, Pattern). So, the most likely scenario is that Spinning produces a result based on what the Spinner imagines would be the most favourable outcomes. It uses the Spinner's intent to manifest. So how does feruchemical Zinc trump this? Easily. You trick them. If a Spinner believes that a good outcome is bad from them, or a bad outcome good, you render their spinning not only null, but actually beneficial towards your plans. Mental speed is exactly what you need to do this - you simply outsmart the Spinner and let them kill themselves off. This could be assisted or replaced by other abilities that would help you in tricking them - feruchemical connection storage, Rioting or Soothing come to mind as ways to assist in manipulating a Spinner. Some might argue 'but if a spinner is so lucky, you wouldn't be able to manipulate them at all!' Remember, Spinning can only grant luck when the intent of the Spinner has an idea what form that luck would take, probably subconciously, similar to Gold healing. So if it did not enter the Spinner's mind that he was or could be being manipulated, they would not luck out and avoid it. Even if it did, they would have to have some sort of idea as to how a lucky scenario could get them out of the situation. So, outsmarting the intent of the Spinner is sufficient to counter any luck-based options they might have.

I second the point about Breath. The fifth heightening and above makes people functionally unaging. The Returned (who have a single breath that grants the fifth heightening) seem to be able to change their physical form at will based on their self-perception. Stormlight healing heals and maintains a person based on their self-perception as well. The returned breath can also be granted to allow instaneous healing akin to Stormlight healing. It aligns quite nicely.

He said it would be possible to bond the Unmade, but implied it would be difficult. Also... So ANY splinter can be bonded, it seems. And the Unmade are just splinters. And the 'superspren' are not the only possible bondsmith bonds, the bondsmiths just do something 'similar' to bonding superspren. Similar does not mean 'the same'.

He said it was LIKE a shardblade. Other questions in other places clarified that Shardblades and Nightblood are similarly invested. If you think about it, we know Nightblood took about the same amount of breaths as the fifth heightening. We know the Returned are splinters of Endowment, and their single breath is equivalent to the fifth heightening. We know spren are splinters. We can thus conclude that Nightblood was invested with approximately the same amount of breath as a splinter, and thus is similar to a shardblade in investiture. It would be QUITE the plot twist, though if you were correct. If you are correct, the implications are that Darkness is Odium or an Odium agent, that the Knights Radiant, Honour, and/or Cultivation cause the Desolations, and that the Desolations are harmful to ODIUM more than anyone else, and their depopulating effects are just a side-effect. Creepy!

We have a WoB somewhere that madman Taln is not Taln, but 'the man who calls himself Taln'. He's going to be a PoV character in the latter half of the Archive, apparently. It was implied that it wasn't the sword that was switched, but the entire person - the Taln from WoK epilogue is somewhere else entirely. Edit found it: Outis signing - Ah, and here is the accompanying bits:

I don't buy it, to be honest. A few reasons. 1. We have no reason to believe Hoid is trying to reform Adonalsium. There is literally no hard evidence, and the soft evidence is really stretching it. 2. Hoid is Brandon's character. He's one of the first characters Brandon write about, he pops up everywhere, he's obviously Brandon's favourite. Brandon is, frankly, a huge horking optimist, idealist, all around guy who wants to believe the best of people. This is evident all over his writing. Would the character he likes most, identifies with most, really be the bad guy? No. He might be strict at times, but I'm sure like most/all of Brandon's bad guys, he's just doing what he thinks is right. Like the Lord Ruler. Or Hrathen. Or Amaram. Or Bluefingers. Or Eshonai. Doubtful he's the antagonist at all. Many of the MCs are underdog characters, who like to break rules. Hoid's apparent character fits right in there with Raoden, Lightsong, Siri, Shai, Kaladin, Shallan, etc, etc in that respect. 3. Hoid is gathering powerful artifacts, some you didn't mention in fact. But he's not the only one. We know there's the 17th Shard. We know there's Nazh, and Khriss. We know there are the Ghostbloods. There is the recipient of the letter. There's the Terriswoman. There are many worldhopping shard-aware personnages with mysterious agendas, and frankly, Hoid has been one of the most helpful, least violent, most forthcoming groups of them all. He hasn't done anything but gather information, spread information, and pick up a few odds and ends from various planets. And generally been a helpful guy while doing it. 4. Hoid in Liar of Partinel was a nice guy.

Semi-shard? What's your basis for that supposition? There's a lot of big guesses in there. As for the pool.... The pool is claimed by the narrative 'to be a thing alive'. Maybe that's the big hint. HEY EVERYBODY, THIS POOL IS ALIVE AND TALKING AND DISINTEGRATING PEOPLE. Honestly hard to tell, especially since I'm not sure what that would imply as a hint.

I would suppose that seeing as the magic is invested, if a shard is shattered, each splinter of that shard would remain invested. Surgebinding still works on Roshar, though Honor shattered. AonDor still works on Sel, though those shards were both shattered. The Investiture remains... invested. I suppose the difference would likely being in the splinters. We know a shard can splinter itself, but it seems to me that if a shard were shattered, and it's cognitive aspect (the shard holder) killed, we would have many, many more splinters and each would require their own cognitive aspect. We also know it's fairly difficult to REMOVE investiture, so it's unlikely one of those splinters could remove it's investiture from the investiture pool. Also interesting might be the question - if a shard shatters, do it's shattered pieces gain a new, derivative intent similar to how when Adonalsium shattered, all the shards had an intent? When Devotion shattered, do the seons all represent things like loyalty, fidelity, constancy, commitment, alleigiane, dedication, fondness, love, admiration, affection, piety, respect, holiness, worship, etc, etc... all little 'parts' of devotion? I'm tempted to say that they do not, experientially. But logically, they should.

A recent Word of Brandon from the Philidelphia signing said that there are other ways to become a feruchemist, but we have not seen them or anything about them as of yet.

It's not clear that land always equals water. Given that the 'water' is a sea of beads, I'm of the personal opinion that the terrain is representative of cognitive entity density. 'The ocean' is one big cognitive thing, and there are a bunch of cognitive things inside it. As a result, when they are on 'the ocean' there is a big flat glassy land surface (the bead of the ocean), and a bunch of smaller ones beneath it. Land however, has tons of tiny cognitive entities on top of it - sand and rocks and plants and insects and germs and other junk. So there are a sea of tiny cognitive entities ON TOP of the land, representing all the things on top of it. So Land is more like one of those kids rooms with all the balls in it, and acts like an ocean. So it's not that terrain is inverted, but that cognitive entity density is the prime factor and it happens to work out that things are usually inverted. Just my take on what we know of the cognitive realm so far. It's also likely that different worlds have different types of realms - we know Sel's is very dangerous, but we don't know why.

So, we've got some excellent back and forths, with some good points all around. Any word from above during the meeting this past weekend? If theory pages are a go, I'll start working on em'. If they're a maybe, I could make just a cross-reference page with forum links to the appropriate discussions, see how they go. If no, I'll move along.

Yes, it's been a while. Thanks for the correction.

The Everstorm is unique to the 'True Desolation', yes. I wasn't implying that there were two planets with world spanning storms! I can't really expand more on this theory until we know more about the Desolations, which will presumably come as they uncover the knowledge of Urithiru in the next book. That's why I decided to call it a mini-theory; I sadly wasn't able to draw any conclusions about the exact nature of the thing.

There's one of thing of real importance that was with Shallan's sketch book - The Book of Endless Pages. We know it was important to Jasnah, and we know that it's important enough that the original name for Words of Radiance was going to be Book of Endless Pages. If Nazh was hunting for something, I suggest it might have been that book instead.

I did not mean to be critical - I find the coppermind wiki to be generally well wriiten and well edited. When dealing with topics where all we have are clues, it's important to paint out the most likely possibilities. It is on a different scale than the forum theories we're discussing. As far as getting theory authors to make pages, I think that the most dedicated will. For others, though, even a stub with a link or copy-pasta of the original post would be sufficient for basic referencing. Again, since I proposed it, I'm willing to put in the effort there to get the ball rolling, and at least get a few major ones as articles, stubs for at least all the current espoused theories in sigs, and stubs and notices for new theories to spread awareness. Of course with moderator approval, and under whatever stipulations you'd like (doesn't mean I won't push for what I think would be the path of highest awesomeness, though ).

Yes, Kurk, you might be right. that was my intention, to use the coppermind as a convenient hosting and reference place for. Much like how Rithmatist articles don't link to Mistborn, there is no need for any core Coppermind articles to link to the theories. The arguments presented previously though, are sound, but it seems like you never gave it up, so perhaps this time will fare better.

Those are strange arguments. It's trivial to put a nice bright notice at the top saying 'This page is for a theory, and is not factual!'. In addition, Wikis have namespaces, it would be reasonably simple to make all theory pages "Theory:MyTheory". Frankly, I'd be a little shocked if just the large, bright coloured notice at the top wasn't enough for people. The theory links will of course link to articles, that is part of the attractiveness of putting them on a wiki. I don't see how that makes them more confusing. Certainly they won't be linked TO from articles, if that's what you meant - there's no particular reason for that. The theory section can stay off in it's own corner until proven wrong or right. The wiki currently has a number of theories on it. They are placed in-article, and have a 'theory' tag on top of them. Far more intrusive than anything I suggested. The forum is great for discussion and debate, but terrible for indexing, reference, and clarity. Easy hyperlinks to (factual!) wiki info, superior formatting options such as columns and tables, the ability to add footnotes, the ability to group and cross-reference theories by category, author, or other criterion - these are all things the forum theory threads lack. Mostly though, it's just difficult to find things on the forum. I don't know how many times Kurkistan or Argent has told me 'This was discussed in X thread, 2.5 years ago, on page 19 of thread 82 in post 26 in the third paragraph, and it was concluded that it is true, here is a link'. Having a nice little section on the wiki will offer a place to keep the core theories updated, to have links to the forum discussions, and to let people interested in speculation on the books or the cosmere see the variety of theories many people have proposed over the years. You seem to feel that putting theories on the wiki will somehow 'invade' the other pages, or impinge upon them, and that wasn't my intention at all.

There's also the bloodline issue - it isn't enough to just BE in Arelon to become an Elantrian, you have to have some Arelon ancestry. It's probable that the ability to access a nation's investiture is embedded into the sDNA of a group living there over extensive time and is inherited. In other words, a Forger from MaiPon may not be able to change their locational glyph to an Aon unless they have some Arelon ancestry.

The purpose of the religions as stated makes it clear that Jaddeth/Skai is Dominion, and Domi/Aona is Devotion. As well as the nomenclature. Keseg was given the concept of 'mind' -unclear if it represents adonalsium or some theoretical combo shard some old Jingo dreamt up.

Didn't even know there was a thread here, but the second issue occurs for me as well - any use of the 'quote' button brings up the memory allocation error. This holds true on all major desktop browsers, and mobile Safari.

I'd like to propose something. Surgebinding, voidbinding, and even what little we know of the old magic all have another thing in common besides stormlight - deals. All three of the above systems require making a deal with things. I'm certain Sanderson has his own cannon name for the systems on Roshar, but perhaps the name could center around just binding. The whole book has a binding theme going on. Could you just call it 'Rosharan Binding' for now? Or similar. Rejected names: Mercantile Magics, Bondage Arts