u/Nyseme_Ptem

We're halfway through the Stormlight Archive and these guys sure don't matter much, despite the regular hemming and hawwing about them. At least once in each of the first three books, the Stormwardens get brought up in each of the following ways:

1. "OH those stormwardens sure are handy! It's nice to know when our next regular hurricane is scheduled! If only they were right ALL the time..."

2. "*gasp* can you BELIEVE there's a group of all-male scholars? I mean i guess it's TECHNICALLY fine, but i hear they read and write... how scandalous!"

3. "Damn those stormwardens and their pseudoscience! What a bunch of barely useful weirdos!"

And it kinda feels like they're really being built up to something, which wouldn't be surprising considering that Roshar has more secret societies than a chasmfiend has legs . Sons of Honor, Envisagers, the Diagram, Skybreakers, the Stone Shaman conspiracy... and those are just the homegrown ones!

So it seems like the Stormwardens might be operating a sort of mostly legitimate but slightly weird front (predicting storms + weird pseudoscience) to hide somethjng more nefarious or plot relevant or both. I used to think they might have a few secret Radiants or something, but that seems very unlikely now (the only Radiants whose actions we know absolutely nothing about are the renegade Skybreakers and nothing we know about Skybreakers would intuitively connect them to a bunch of pseudoscientists.

They seem similar to real life alchemists - a mix of some real, useful knowledge with a whole lot of bunk thrown in. They stick around cause of their usefulness but are kind of on the fringes of society.

Their very few plot functions are: predicting highstorms, slightly tempting Renarin by being a visibly male set of scholars, teaching Amaram to write (using glyphs). None of these is really unique - Brandon could have very very easily written the Stormwardens out and had other groups or individuals fulfill these functions.

Anyhow I'm curious if anyone has theories about what's going on with them?

Are they just there for worldbuilding flavor/texture? Gender commentary, since scholarship is predominantly female? Do they have some greater significance yet to be revealed? Are there hints I'm missing? DID they have some grand plan that was thrown off by the sudden end of the world, derailed so quietly no one noticed? Did Brandon plan something big for them and realize there were too many conspiracies so he quietly cut them out? Also, what the hell happens to them now that they're kinda useless?

When Sivi has her conversation with Szeth at a bar in Mokdown, she steals a cup. There's only one other character in the Cosmere who likes cups. AND Sivi is the only Honorbearer to die naturally instead of being killed by Nightblood, meaning her soul was not immediately consumed. Presumably, her soul survived death (perhaps becoming a cognitive shadow or by some other method) and traveled to Lumar. This was obviously a long and arduous journey, and so her soul was greatly depleted, and only a tiny slice of investiture was left when she reached Lumar. That tiny bit of investiture attached itself to Tress' pregant mom and became part of Tress' Innate Investiture, and that tiny sliver? Sivi's compulsive attachment to cups, transferred to the unborn Tress!