Terisen

Welcome! A wonderful world await you in other Sanderson novels! I would agree with Leftinch that the Mistborn trilogy is a good introduction to the Cosmere. Did you have any book in particular you were planning on reading next?

A personal invitation by the Lord of Lords himself? I must say, hard to turn that down! What would you require of me, Lord Chaos?

I may align myself here just so I can always be humming the Symphony X song Lords of Chaos! For reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87N1NdSyvEM Best lyric: The Lords of Chaos will never die!!

The whole "Kaladin becoming Odium's champion" has a little too much Anakin-becomes-Darth-Vader vibe for me. Though, it would be much better written this time around.....

Wild theory here, but I wonder if the Shardplate we see is the soul of the Radiant (or something akin to it). There was a cost for the spren for the broken bond (they died and were left as Blades). I'd venture that the cost for the Radiants was their soul, which was left as Shardplate. You can see that they were almost zombie-like when Dalinar ran after them in the vision. The other people would react to him, so it's not like these couldn't see or hear him.

I see Nightblood a bit like a computer program (I'm a programmer, so this is how I see the world. Shut up. ) It's (relatively) simply to write a program that does one thing and does it well. But there's no room for interpretation. "Why'd that program delete my file?" "Well, you told it to." Trying to introduce nuance and subtlety becomes a monumental task and is one of the challenges of AI programming. Now try to imagine wrapping all that up into a single vocal command. Just can't be done that simply.

Looks like we have a little inconsistency here. I remembered Moash having a different color of eyes and I was right. In the Way of Kings, it's described this way: But in Words of Radiance, we get Either Kaladin is mistaken about Moash's previous eye color or we've just got ourselves an old fashioned error in the text (not unheard of in a story this large).

We don't really know for sure what the "reward" for the next step in the progression is yet. Heck, we don't even know if what the plate is made out of. And I'm curious if it's really 5 truths stated in place of 5 oaths. It seems likely, but I don't know if that's a guarantee.

You've blown our cover. You must be eliminated.

I generally favor battle anime (manga), but I agree, anime has so MANY different types of shows within it. If you like Death Note, you may want to check out Bakuman. Totally different type of story, but done by the same two creators of Death Note. I enjoyed it immensely.

I definitely like the idea of 5 to 5. 10 never struck me as very symmetrical (I guess you could make it symmetrical by looking at it in binary as 01010). Having both Honor and Cultivation be aligned to the number 5 makes it nice and symmetrical as they can have exact mirrors potentially. You see other examples of 5 in the story. 5 Ideals for the Radiants. 5 categories of fabrials. 5 chips to make a mark and 5 marks to a garnet. 5 Vorin kingdoms. 5 male heralds and 5 female heralds. And so forth.

I'd definitely try to ally myself with the Kholins. Most of the world's surgebinders (currently) are centered around that one family. If possible, I'd try to get in the good graces of Jasnah with the knowledge of the Cosmere (as others have done). The only problem is that the guards and others around them have a penchant for dying. They're like the Star Trek red shirts of Roshar. The other drawback would be having to be around Elhokar. Man, I'd want to smack that whiner. Probably would wind up in prison at the least. Hey, maybe that would let me meet Vasher (provided he winds up in jail AGAIN).

I've pictured the atoms as sort of a quantum-level Aon based on the way Brandon described it. "[T]he atomic code is a key by which the power is drawn in." Sounds sort of like how the Aon's shape determines the power drawn in. I think that there's something here with Stormlight as well, particular how high densities of it are dangerous. Recall that when Kaladin is talking to Syl about Jezrien's Honorblade, she stated that using the blade required dangerous amounts of Stormlight. Why is it so dangerous? I don't think we have a definitive answer on it, so I'd suggest that it's corroding something by having that much Stormlight. The other problem that we get when comparing Investiture across magic systems is that we have no good conversion table. Heck, for Stormlight, gems are a bad unit of measure as Sigzil noted when trying to help Kaladin train. Is a cubic inch of Stormlight equivalent to a cubic inch of Breath? What about the Dor? And even though we have the terms "high Investiture" and "low Investiture", do we even know how that equates? Is it double for high versus low? Triple? (If there's a WoB on this, can someone point it out to me?) I've made some assumptions here that something like Stormlight isn't orders upon orders of magnitudes greater than Allomancy because, well, had to guess somewhere.

Based on that list alone, I'd say you'll fit in just fine here! What animes? (I'm a fan, if you couldn't tell by the avatar)

If it's a spren, just have them change to a shield the instant they come back. That is, if it DOES come back. I've thrown boomerangs before and, well, there's a lot of running on my part to go retrieve it because it never turns around (I know, I'm not very good at it).

I figured it would either be you, Tempus or Kurkistan who replied first. Certainly. I was basing this off what I read from the Realmatic Attributes original post, as it made a lot of sense to me. I'll pull out the part that I was basing this off. I did not mean to imply with my theory that Allomancy was purely physical, just that it's more tilted towards the physical than the other realms. Also, the size of the metal vs. the Aons doesn't seem to be an issue for me. With Allomancy, we're dealing with an atomic scale. The metals are, to my mind, burned away atom by atom (or molecule by molecule). This is why you can ration out your Allomancy over time instead of getting one big bang the first time you use it, depending on the size of the metal flake. You CAN flare the metals, which consumes more of the metal at a time, but it's not like the Aon that is over a MUCH larger area when compared to the atomic level and is consumed all at once. This is the density I was referring to.

The Caustic Nature of Investiture First and foremost, I need to recognize Tempus for a ton of help on this theory. There were multiple conversations that we had and I couldn’t have put this together without those conversations. Credit where credit is due. Introduction There were certain properties and side-effects from the magic systems and magical artifacts that seemed to align and suggest an overall property of the unified magic system. I had seen another thread in the Warbreaker forum that hinted at the link[1], but only explored the relationship between two of the worlds/magic systems. Specifically, it was the similarity between an object that had been drained of color and a wound on a limb that had been inflicted by a Shardblade and how both turned grey. The relationship was explored, but didn’t seem to be expanded to the Cosmere as a whole. I wanted to take the similarities of the two and find a common thread for all the magic systems because it seemed too coincidental for Awakening and Shardblades to grey things out but nothing else. After a false start where I tried to have everything result in something being greyed out, I read the Realmatic Attributes theory. That coupled with suggestions from Tempus led me to the actual nature of Investiture. Theory Investiture is, by nature, a caustic force. More specifically, it corrodes different features of the different realms, with the strength of the corrosion proportional on the volume of Investiture that is concentrated in the realm for the magic system. Reasoning The easiest place to start with this is with Allomancy. As Chaos posited in the Realmatic attributes thread, Allomancy is focused very heavily in the Physical Realm[2]. The metal acts as a conduit for the Allomancy and, when being used, the metal is vaporized[3]. The only two components here are the metal and the Investiture, so it stands to reason that the Investiture is responsible for the vaporization. It is packed in to a very small area, causing the Investiture to become very dense in a very small area and the metal is eliminated in the Physical Realm. Consider another example of dense Investiture in Nightblood. While we’ve seen denser collections of Breaths in others (Nightblood has 1,000 Breaths and the God King has over 10,000), the Breaths in Nightblood are constantly activated due to the command given while Awakening. The Breaths in Susebron remain “dormant”. When drawn, Nightblood vaporizes people when coming in contact[4], just the same as metal in Allomancy. Nightblood even discolors with his smoke in the same way a Shardblade discolors when cutting[5]. Awakening drains the color when used. So how does this fit? Well, the caustic nature of the Investiture is still burning something up, but it happens to be in a different realm. This time, it occurs in the Spiritual Realm. The color is used up much like the metal in Allomancy, but the users see it in a very different way. The object still exists in the Physical Realm, but a component of its spiritual identity is missing. This shows as the object now being grey in the Physical Realm. The burning of the attribute in the Spiritual Realm is a function of the magic system (Physical for Allomancy, Spiritual for Awakening). This is because Awakening has a heavier presence in the Spiritual Realm. Again, density per realm is important. Take, then Feruchemy. This one gave me a bit of trouble when I was initially trying to justify everything as turning grey. However, in the model of Investiture being caustic, it fits fairly well in my mind. The attributes stored are moved from an individual to a metalmind. I picture this happening along a “stream” of investiture. It would appear that it’s a one-to-one transfer. But I believe there’s an actual cost to this and the attribute actually has a little bit burned away during the transfer. It’s not a tremendous amount as the flow is not really dense. But consider what happens when a Feruchemist draws quickly upon a metalmind (or uses more of what is stored). Decreasing returns[6]. This is because more of the material is carried faster along the Investiture. A bigger stream of Investiture, if you will, which is a higher density. You lose to the corrosive nature of the Investiture. For brevity’s sake here, I’ve listed the systems and the feature corroded below. Allomancy -> Metal Feruchemy -> Attribute Stored Hemalurgy -> Unknown for now AonDor -> Shape Drawn ChayShan -> Unknown for now Dahkor -> Unknown for now Stormlight -> Heat (resulting in frost) Awakening -> Color The purpose here is not to make a definitive listing, but to provide the framework. If people come up with what the item corroded is, I’m willing to update this list. While not an official part of this theory, I believe this may explain why Adonalsium shattered. Much like a star using up all its fuel and going supernova, the innate Investiture there may have caused Adonalsium to shatter. And, like a supernova star reforming into planets and another star, we could get the 16 shards. This also implies that Adonalsium may not be able to be put back together, as has been posited in another theory. References Edit: Formatting

Does that mean there's a picture of Jar Jar hidden somewhere in the Diagram. Heaven help those poor Rosharans.... This was the point I was trying to make above, but I think you've said it a little better.

Would this, then, be something akin to Stormlight Soulstamping? You would be changing the nature of the metal by embedding the pattern on the metal? I kind of like that idea.

I totally agree and that's where I was ultimately trying to go with this. I've just gotten sidetracked on other theories and what not, so this is on the backburner right now. I really should get back to it.

True, the Radiants were more efficient in using Stormlight. Syl pretty states that outright when talking about the Honorblade. But I guess it comes down a difference of power vs. efficiency. And maybe that's where I misunderstood.

I guess that's where we would disagree. I can see your perspective, but I feel that hyper-genius-T would be even further down the path of not understanding people. He's so singular in his brilliance that he can only see the forest but not the tree (so to speak). He can certainly project events with uncanny accuracy, but he's lost all connection to the individual person. They're just tools to be read and used.

An Honorblade only getting you to the level of a rookie surgebinder? Maybe I misunderstood you, but I highly doubt that's the case. The Heralds used the Honorblades and, while they did have other powers, their surgebinding came from the Honorblades. I can't fathom every Radiant being more powerful than a Herald.

I know you're not trying to promote yourself, Chaos, but that Realmatic Attributes thread you started definitely needs to be featured.

Welcome! Yes, you'll indeed be interested in Warbreaker after finished Words of Radiance. If you're really interested in the Cosmere stuff, the board for that is fantastic with a lot of great theories on how all this stuff works together.