Leyrann

While I agree that TOdium has the potential to be extremely scary, I feel like people here are a bit quick to draw conclusions. Taravangian's goal has always been to save as many people as he could - he is just utterly ruthless in doing so. He saw Odium's victory as inevitable, and did what he could to save as many people in that inevitability. His goal was to save the whole world, but he settled for Kharbaranth - because it was better than no one at all. Similarly, now from Taravangian's PoV we have a trustworthy assessment of what Odium, the Shard, actually is. And it's not just hate. It's also not just passion. It's all emotion, but with a focus on hate for some unclear reason. Still, that is more varied, more balanced, than many people previously thought. An issue that I suspect the Shard of Odium naturally has, is that the potential Vessels it will be compatible with tend to be emotional, rather than rational, people, who are as a consequence not very adept at acting on reason. Taravangian, however, is adept at that. He operates on logic to a degree that is scary. This will naturally balance out with the Shard and yes, on the long term that will cause conflict. But it takes time before the Shard's Intent overtakes the Vessel - remember that Ruin was able to create a planet together with Preservation, and Harmony, now handicapped by an inability to act, could reshape a planet. I believe that Taravangian's goal will be to save as many people as he can, and he will try to bear the burden himself. He now has the option to engineer peace between humans and singers - the only reason he would not go for that, would be because he believes they cannot live together. Does he believe that? He very well could. In which case I have no idea what will happen. But if he believes he has the power to engineer peace, he will do so. At least, so long as he can without contradicting his Intent. I also believe he will start to look outward - from his PoVs after taking up the Shard, it seems he considers at least some of the other Shards a danger to the Cosmere, which he by his nature as a person cannot accept - as many people as possible need to be saved, by any means available. And I indeed would not be surprised if he starts picking up other Shards with the goal of balancing his Intent to align with his plans as a Vessel better. I'm not sure if Taravangian taking up the Shard is a good or a bad thing. It is definitely very scary, but I could certainly imagine it to be to the benefit of the majority.

BUT THERE'S STILL SIX BOOKS LEFT TO GO!!

OH MY GOD HE'S DELVING INTO METAL FOR DEATH (WITHOUT PIZZA)!!! SORRY FOR CAPS BUT IM SO HYPED!

I think we already know the antagonist of MB4, no matter who it is. Is it Hoid? Perhaps. Maybe it's a tri-Shard Dalinar. Or Kelsier. Elantris. People will clash, and Brandon will certainly try to get us as invested as possible, and what better way to do that than to pitch those we love against one another, on the assumption it makes sense they're opposed?

OO! OO! OOKLA!

Realism is considered an important part of fantasy, in particular by Brandon Sanderson.

Back in Tolkien's days, writers didn't really take such things into account (hence Aragorn). Nowadays, 70 years later, writers do, and Brandon first and foremost. Kaladin could perhaps be a descendant of the male line (meaning only (oldest) sons), which would be less contrived. That being said, I don't see why he would have to be. We already know his personal values are what attracted Syl.

After 2000 years? (6000 since the Desolations started) That's ridiculously contrieved. Both 0 and hundreds are vastly more likely. That's not how genetics works. Over 6000 years, assuming an average of 25 years for a new generation, on average 1/1700000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000th of a certain ancestor's genes are still present when working under the assumption all ancestors are unique (which, I think quite obviously, is not true). Jezrien will occur quite a few times in that family tree, but that random farmer he killed for siding with the voidbringers may occur just as often.

Considering mass = energy = investiture I don't really see the difference. At least not from a god's point of view.

That's not gonna work, due to the requirement of Intent. Once they know about anti-matter though... Even disregarding everything else, just the sheer impact of an FTL object (and the inability to see it coming, literally) is a deadly weapon in itself: https://what-if.xkcd.com/1/

Nah, planetary gravity isn't strong enough for things like that. Compare our solar system: The moon's gravity is stronger than the sun's gravity. The sun is roughly 5 times (iirc) closer to us than Jupiter ever is, and has roughly 100 times Jupiter's mass, making it's gravity roughly 2500 times stronger than Jupiter's gravity if I've done my math right. Jupiter's gravity, therefore, is something less than 0.04% of the moon's gravity (I don't remember the relationship in gravity between sun and moon). And we know how much (or actually how little) the moon influences our planet; some tides and that's it. For extreme tidal effects from gas giants you have to look at their closest moons, as that's the distance on which it's actually strong (I believe only the closest of Jupiter's major moons has significant tidal effects, for example). As for the highstorms, they don't line up with any astronomical phenomenon that we know about. They don't line up with the rotation of the planet (a day), the place of the moons (half a day, math is explained elsewhere) or the position of other planets (a specific planetary lineup cannot occur more often than the innermost planet's time to circle their star, meaning the shortest possible lineup is something at least somewhat longer than Ashyn's rotation around the star; considering the planet is in the habitable zone and the star is like F- or A-type (it's white) Ashyn is probably about as far from the star as the Earth is, and has a similar length of a year). The only astronomical phenomenon that I could see influencing the highstorms would be the star's rotation, but that would likely not be able to explain the variance in when highstorms occur. It would probably still require magic, as well, to carry over such strong influence. It's quite possible we're just not aware of the gas giant's moons. Astronomy doesn't seem to be very advanced on Roshar. (sadly, for us Cosmere-lovers) There's some weird stuff in the system (the moons in particular) so it's probably a safe assumption that Adonalsium handcrafted it. He for sure handcrafted life on Roshar because a white star doesn't have a lifespan long enough for such evolution to occur (on the assumption that Earth is average); expect something from 100 million to maybe 2 billion years. (it's astronomy btw) They're likely in the same orbit. Even if they wouldn't be, however, they'd never be on a collision course because their periods are exactly the same (hence why they always appear at the same times). Still, they're close enough to Roshar and one another that their positions aren't stable on an astronomical scale. It works fine for Cosmere scale though.

For the record, Era 2 takes place either in between the SA arcs or during the second arc. Era 3 takes place sometime a few decades to a century later (depending on how fast technology on Scadrial will progress...).

I disagree. It creates light, which isn't an illusion, it's just intangible. However, on a deeper level it seems related to waves, and, well, cymatics does the rest. We even got a nice piece of foreshadowing about the Plains with that . Isn't that (likely to be) a Bondsmith unique thing though?

Shattered Plains are more likely from lightweaving though, considering their symmetry. Also, Brandon has said before (though in relation to allomancy at the time) that a Shard can't purposefully hold back their Investiture; if someone meets the requirements to use it, they can do so no matter what the Shard wants.

What if the entire "seeing the future is of the voidbringers" idea is wrong though? Corrupting religion isn't a first in the Cosmere, and seems to not even be a first on Roshar. How do we know Truthwatchers couldn't see into the future in some way?