agrabes

When Odium said a true ending, etc he was referencing the current hostilities. He was trying to stop Dalinar from stalling for more time to make a better deal. He doesn't say clearly if it's intended to be permanent as in forever. And other things he says imply that it is not. For example, he says "I will be able to focus my attentions on sending agents to the rest of the cosmere, using what I've conquered here as enough for now." He wouldn't say "for now" if he meant he would never be able to conquer the rest of Roshar.

What oaths did Dalinar swear? None yet that I know of. The entire point of my post is to provide possible ways Dalinar could win the contest and then violate the deal. One way would be for him to realize he's bound by conflicting oaths - one that says he must protect certain people and another that says he must let them die. He could easily swear a new oath in the early part of SA5. It's not spelled out that each side can cross the other's territory to get to their own territory in what we see of the deal on screen, but seems likely to be part of it. Those are the kinds of provisions always included in these types of deals. If you look at any contract in the real world about this kind of thing, it always includes provisions to make it so someone can't landlock you out of the use of your property. And if the two sides are at peace, there seems to be no reason to prevent them from entering each other's territory. Generally peace deals include things like the right of each others' citizens to enter each other's territory. If it was during war - yes everything you're saying is true. But if you agree to peace with someone who controls a city in the middle of your territory, you're agreeing to let them access it. Just like West Berlin - there may be tension but it will be allowed. After Stalin cut off land access, the NATO side supplied the city by air for several years. Theoretically, the Soviets could have shot those planes down, but they knew that would start a nuclear war so they didn't. So what would really happen is, at worst Odium would send supplies and reinforcements by air. He'd probably do something similar to the "Fourth Bridge" we see in RoW. Even in the worst case - let's say everything you are saying is correct. Odium sends a small force and captures a city. Dalinar ignores it, knowing it's best for him to let it go. Odium's forces can't come and go, so they can't effectively rule. The people rise up in their own name and do not propose to join Dalinar. They are free of Odium's effective rule. Ultimately, they still all starve to death and the land remains in Odium's control. Per the terms of the deal, that land belongs to Odium and Odium can refuse to allow Dalinar to send any aid to the city or allow anyone to enter the city at all. The Fused hole up in the city walls and prevent anyone from leaving. They might not be able to effectively hold the city against military invasion but they would have enough people to hold the city gates against a popular uprising for 6 months until everyone starves to death. So we end up with a situation where people begin starving to death because no one is allowed to come in or go out of the city. If Dalinar sends aid, he's violated the deal and Odium goes free. I just don't see Dalinar sitting around and watching a city die of starvation any more than I see him watching Odium slaughter a city of people he views as his. You're right, Dalinar isn't Kaladin and he understands sacrifices must be made for tactical reasons. But that and this are different. He's the ruler of his people, choosing to let thousands of people die in suffering. That does not square with his oaths as a Bondsmith in my opinion. But who knows - this whole scenario will probably never happen anyway.

He rejected Hoid's contract, but the final contract is not much different than Hoid's original contract. And Hoid cares most about Odium being bound. And there are no real stakes to the contract for Dalinar other than Hoid being bound. He wins - great he gets some of his territory back but Odium's still around. He loses, and everyone still has peace and loses no ground from their current state. They only lose him. I don't see why they should be overly afraid of that - he is not that much more powerful than all the other powerful fused that Odium can call on and they already have another bondsmith. Dalinar's bond to the Stormfather won't go with him if he dies and becomes a Fused, so someone else could eventually take his place as bondsmith. The stakes are just too low for the Rosharans - barely anything changes either way. It's not going to be a permanent peace - it would make no sense for Odium to agree to that. They didn't say "permanent". They didn't say it specifically, but there must be some time limit on it. It's probably the original 1000 year term. The only terms changed from Hoid's original deal (at least the part we know about since it was a sheet of paper and could have held more than Dalinar and Odium discussed) are that the Fused and Voidspren won't be locked away. They will only be ordered by Odium not to attack Dalinar and his allies, which is effectively the same thing. This is Hoid's deal. What the Rosharans want is to end the cycle of desolations. They want to make it so that they no longer have an evil god living on their world, bent on their destruction so that he can be freed into the cosmere. They want to win the war or have a real peace to end it. That requires destroying Odium or letting him go free. This deal doesn't do that for them and they only accepted because they were sure they would lose without it. It's possible they could get a 1000 year deal at the end of SA5 and then in SA6-10 we come back 1000 years later to see them fight to actually win for real. But that doesn't really seem to line up with the overall cosmere timeline. Maybe it would happen though - can't say I'm an expert in that stuff.

You're right - the contract is based on what Hoid wants. He had a huge hand in writing it and the Rosharans are basing a lot of their decisions on what he tells them. That's why to me, it feels like a lame conclusion to the front 5 books if the Rosharans are doing this all to achieve Hoid's goals and not their own. I think you're right that Jasnah is waking up to this and realizing that Hoid isn't working for their interests even if he does help them sometimes. Also - I definitely missed the part in that reading where it said they called a meeting within an hour. So, yeah definitely was urgent! I think they are there in person - hence the meeting in the middle of the night. But I don't really feel strongly one way another. In terms of Odium and his overall strategy: the whole purpose of the Oathpact was to keep Odium trapped on Roshar. I don't think it's his chosen home territory, I think it's his prison. He wants to be out splintering shards which is what he was doing prior to being trapped on Roshar. So if he get the ability to leave, he's gone. We're supposed to be afraid that he will get loose and destroy the Cosmere and the whole premise of the story is that our heroes have been told by the Stormfather and by Hoid that they have to keep him trapped on Roshar to honor the oaths made by Honor and those who came before them. I personally think that Odium is not actually as strong as we think. Him getting free now would be a problem, but not as catastrophic as we're being led to believe by the Stormfather and Hoid.

You're thinking of this the wrong way. Odium's goal is not to win the war against Dalinar, his goal is to trick Dalinar or his allies into violating the terms of the agreement. Odium doesn't have to capture a strategically significant position and he doesn't have to capture it for a long time. In the most extreme example, he could simply send his Heavenly Ones and Skybreakers to an unimportant and lightly defended medium sized city and occupy it in the last few hours of the ten days. Then, per the treaty it is his territory and Dalinar is not allowed to take it back. So maybe he decides to start killing off civilians, one a day until Dalinar stops him. Or maybe he doesn't even do that. Dalinar swore an oath to protect them and keep them out of Odium's hands. Dalinar might be compelled by his oath to fight to take that city back even if most of the people there don't mind being ruled by Odium. At worst, you have a "West Berlin" situation. Odium can't break the terms of the deal due to his nature as a shard and how he is bound by the Oathpact so he will not fight Dalinar's side. He will have to be allowed peaceful passage to and from his territory. So he can bring in troops, supplies, etc after the contest is over. And if the population rises up against him, all the better. Either they have violated the deal if the rebels align themselves with Dalinar, or if they don't they create a humanitarian crisis which puts pressure on Dalinar to interfere and break the terms of the deal.

I think it's interesting - I'm approaching this with the idea that SA5 and the first SA arc should be about things that matter to Rosharans first and foremost. Hoid can want what he wants and he can help here and there, but (I really hope at least) this book is not about him achieving his goals. I hadn't been keeping up with the new readings but I did check out the one you mentioned. I don't really think there ever was an alliance between Hoid and the Rosharans. Hoid is out to achieve his own goal, but whatever that goal is, it's not the story of at least SA1-5. His story just overlaps with it a bit, like it does with all the other cosmere books. It terms of your second paragraph, I see what you mean. But I'm looking at it sort of as a set of mixed goals. Winning the contest is important, but Dalinar knows that winning the contest isn't everything. It just takes away the immediate threat of being ground to powder by the constantly regenerating Fused. There are a million other things to do. So, I think what Dalinar is doing is basically saying he will handle the Contest mostly on his own because at the end of the day no one else can help him anyway. He's already on to the next thing and putting contingency plans in place by getting things going with BAM and Ishar. We haven't seen it yet, but I'm sure he and Navani also come up with plans for how to build on what they've done so far at Urithiru and how the Sibling is now awake, etc. From the readings, we do know that Adolin and Shallan report in, but do we know it's about something urgent? I think they are just reporting in to say "Mission Complete, here's what we learned. Now what should we do next? Here's what we think we should do." What I honestly think is that Odium does get his loophole. It would make a ton of narrative sense. Odium leaves Roshar and runs out into the greater cosmere. That leads to really cool stories and really starts shifting the conflict to a cosmere scale. Odium "wins" and scrams out of Roshar/Braize. This leaves our heroes free to deal with the local problems that are affecting Roshar and get things in a pretty good place by the end of SA5. They probably do something like broker a peace agreement with the Singers and maybe even the Fused. SA5 ends with Roshar mostly safe but our heroes are feeling really guilty knowing they've unleashed a great evil on the rest of the cosmere. They are safe, but everyone else is not. So they spend the "gap years" training and building cosmere knowledge so that in SA6-10 they take the fight to Odium wherever he is.

Hey thanks for the shoutout. This definitely would be an interesting way to go and it ties in with the death rattle. I like your idea and think it would be a good story, but I was personally thinking more along the lines of Dalinar winning the contest of champions and then breaking the agreement. The agreement says Dalinar will let Odium keep the lands he controls (not sure if this is at the time of the agreement or at the time of the contest) minus Herdaz and Alethkar. I could easily see a situation where something like this happens: 1) If the deal is based on who controls what at the time of the Contest, then Odium makes a huge push and conquers land that Dalinar has made an oath to protect right at the last second. Dalinar wins the contest and then has to choose between breaking his oath and honoring the deal with Odium, or keeping his oath and breaking the deal with Odium. 2) If the deal is based on who controls what at the time the deal is made, then during the 10 days Odium gets some of his followers to pose as refugees from some of the lands he controls. Or, he gets his followers to chase refugees out to Dalinar. They beg for Dalinar's aid and protection. Maybe he doesn't know where they are from. He swears an oath to defend them or to restore their lands. Dalinar wins the contest and the refugees tell him it's now time for Dalinar to hold up his end of the bargain. What does he do? Will he break his promise, or set Odium free?

I think it's a good point to bring up that there might not even be a contest. It would honestly be cool if there wasn't, IMO. As I was writing this response, I was thinking about why the Contest seems really lame to me. I think it's because the stakes just don't really make a lot of sense from the point of view of the Rosharans. The idea behind it was to try to stop Odium/Fused from destroying Roshar in war by tempting Odium with something he wants. Good idea. But now, the agreement means that basically nothing changes either way for the Rosharans. So why should they care? Worst case, Dalinar sacrifices himself to save millions of people and gives everyone a thousand years to prepare for the next time Odium comes back. Dalinar should care personally and do his best to prepare himself to win and he should ready his people to continue without him should he fail. In terms of is the Contest the resolution or not, I don't think making it not the solution leaves loose ends. I don't really consider the things you're talking about to be loose ends that are relevant to the story of SA. The things you're talking about are loose ends in terms of the wider story of the Cosmere as a whole but that story isn't over so they really aren't loose ends. Kaladin knows that there's an offworlder working for Dalinar - but there's not really a need for him to pursue that any further and I don't think Dalinar or others learning that particular secret has much relevance to the story. The immortal in question isn't going to get involved in Roshar's wars and Dalinar & Company can't make him. Same with Shallan and Adolin - the things they learn that are relevant to Roshar will be revealed such as if they are able to find BAM, etc. That's going to happen regardless - it's their main mission for SA5. There might be a throwaway line in the falling action about how Shallan figured out some things about the Ghostbloods, the Cosmere, etc but it's not going to be center stage. Honestly, I'd love it if Part 1 or Part 2 was the end of the Contest. My ideal early plot might be something like this: Kaladin and Szeth go to Shin to talk to Ishar. They find a way to talk with him without him trying to kill them, but quickly realize that talk therapy isn't going to work in 10 days and likely will never work since Ishar's madness is based in magic. They have to scrap Dalinar's plan and try something else. Adolin and Shallan get some kind of clue about how to find BAM and return to report in to Dalinar. They leave quickly on a new mission to find and possibly restore BAM, possibly in conjunction with Rlain, Venli & Co. El and Moash do something interesting and creepy, giving us a hint at Odium's plans and/or how their personal goals deviate from those plans. Dalinar, Navani and Jasnah sit in Urithiru and contemplate strategy (both battle and philosophical) for the Contest. The Contest happens, and the results are unexpected. Whatever happens, it launches us into the true climactic conflict. Whatever the true conflict is - it will have stakes that make sense as something extremely important for Roshar. Ultimately, I think you have it right - Odium doesn't care about winning the contest. His goal is to trick Dalinar into violating the agreement, which would free him to move around the Cosmere and do what he wants. I think it's more interesting if he does that after Dalinar has already won the contest. Or possibly before, if it happens without spending huge chunks of the book dwelling on the ten days. I just don't really see a good story in spending the whole book preparing for a contest of champions where the result ultimately isn't relevant (if Odium succeeds in tricking Dalinar into violating the agreement) or isn't interesting (if Dalinar wins or loses and then everyone goes home to sit on their hands for 1000 years while Odium sends his agents out into the Cosmere).

I think you're right. The contest can't be the climax of the book because it feels way too straightforward and it leaves no time to set up the state of Roshar and the cosmere going forward. Part 3 makes sense per Sanderson's SA book structure like you said. If SA5 were the complete end of the SA then I could possibly see it. Good guys win, Odium destroyed or otherwise handled forever, or a WoT type ending where the cycle starts fresh and a new age begins with the bad guy locked up. But we know that's not the case - this is just the end of the first arc of Stormlight and we at least suspect that Odium's plot has bigger implications for the grand story of the Cosmere at large since he's been set up at least so far as the Cosmere's ultimate big bad. That may not be true in the end, but it's what we're being set up for so far. I think the timing/continuity aspect ties to the 10 day time limit and probably isn't relevant to where in the book the battle will be. Sanderson probably wants the contest to tie into some kind of in world event such as a certain moon being in the sky, a highstorm being present on the battlefield, etc. And most likely, saying that it will be 10 days until the contest puts him in a bind because the highstorm is supposed to be in a different place than he wants the battle or a different moon is in the sky, etc. My personal theory is that the battle will happen early or at the midpoint of the book and the results are unexpected. For example - Dalinar wins and per the deal Odium withdraws and returns Herdaz and Alethkar to the Knights Radiant. However, something causes Dalinar to violate the terms of the agreement. There could be a lot of things that could happen - maybe Dalinar becomes obligated to fight to conquer one of the nations he promised that Odium could keep. Breaking the deal would void everything and set Odium free on Roshar and the Cosmere. The contest itself is not exactly boring, but not super interesting, IMO. What makes it exciting is the preparation leading up to it and the way everyone deals with the aftermath. With the battle being only 10 days away, I can't really see either side doing anything too major for preparation. It's not like Dalinar can go off and do a months long training arc. Dalinar's plan is for Kaladin and Szeth to cure Ishar's madness enough without magic that he will train Dalinar in how to be a bondsmith. I don't see that as something that can be done in 10 days. With the way Sanderson has written mental illness up to this point I just don't see a true cure happening in that time. And Ishar himself talks about gaining sanity for a short time so that he can explain how to fix the Oathpact, which feels like a longer term thing that's mostly unrelated to the Contest. Shallan's quest is also unrelated to the Contest and feels like something that addresses the longer term situation on Roshar. There's just not much interesting prep that can be done leading up to the battle. So I think the bulk of the book has to be about the consequences of how the Contest goes weird - either winning with unexpected consequences or losing and salvaging the aftermath. There is a lot of foreshadowing about this, imo.

I think you're right about the backlog thing - I think it's an intentional strategy and if he can stick to it honestly I think it will be really good for him personally and for us as fans. I personally feel like the quality of his writing (though still good) has been going down since probably Oathbringer. It rebounds a bit when he gets to try something new like the first Skyward, or his first Secret Project. But when he feels boxed in and he's writing just because he's promised us he would, he loses his creativity and the books just don't feel right. I know a lot of fans just really want to see the next thing in Cosmere and find out the next secret. But for me, those secrets really fall flat if I don't care about the characters and I'm not right there with them thinking holy crap what does this mean for them and their world. Lately it feels more like the secrets are laid out for people who care the most about the "laws of physics" of the Cosmere. Which is great for a lot of people, but isn't for me. If he assumes 300k per year and writing 3 Ghostblood novels at 200k each plus two Elantris novels at 200 k that puts him at 1 million words to write. That would be about 3 and a third years. So you'd be looking at him done with all three in early/mid 2028. That gives him two and a half years of "quiet time" to write what he wants without pressure. Imagine what he could do with that time. I think it leaves him free to really set up the second Stormlight pentology on solid footing. Maybe he'll come up with a new format for the back half that lets him write them without so much burnout. Or, maybe he jumps to a different planned trilogy while slowly writing SA in the background. If it's successful, I could see him trying to write all his major trilogies/pentologies/etc in one go. Releasing public plans many years in advance (in my uninformed opinion) may have led to him feeling a bit boxed in creatively. It'll be sad to go years without a major Sanderson release, but I think it will be worth it. Heck, even if he just needs 2 years away from writing, he deserves it.

I really like this approach to who this being might be. That said, I think there's a possibility you may be missing here. I think that Gavilar was being approached by more than one entity - one of which was the Stormfather (who sends the visions, etc) the other was something unknown. Sometimes, the Stormfather behaved like normal and others he didn't. I don't know that the Stormfather would know when or if another being is getting into Gavilar's head. Do we know of anything that would preclude two voices in Gavilar's head, both claiming to be the Stormfather? It would require a few things as I see it: 1) Real Stormfather can't detect others' influences in Gavilar 2) "Stormfaker" can detect the Real Stormfather's conversations with Gavilar and insert its own snippets to lead him astray Both of these things seem like they would be possible and it gives me a strong Ruin/Preservation vibe.

Yes, that was what I meant by saying he plots each Stormlight book as multiple books, I was just too lazy to go in and dig up the exact terminology he uses for it. I've seen that quote before, or maybe one of a handful of others where he talks about this topic. There are some other quotes where he goes into more detail about how he plots out each section. The way he talks about it, it seems like it's an idea he got which worked really well for tWoK and WoR but then he was committed. The extra stuff (and by stuff, I mean the interludes in particular) he put in the last two books, especially RoW, was just not as good in my opinion. I don't really care to read about the favorite romance novels of a random no-name character who is not at all part of the main story for example. Even parts the main story (Eshonai/Venli's flashbacks) just didn't seem to be nearly as good as in previous books. I think Sanderson knew this - he talked about it in his writing updates on RoW and how he felt Eshonai/Venli's flashbacks just weren't working well. But, he'd committed to make a major part of the Stormlight book structure to be flashbacks of a character so he didn't have much room to work. I'd rather have had him cut maybe 50-60% of those flashbacks, rather than stick to the format of always having major flashbacks. Those are the kinds of things I'm talking about. Your mileage my vary, and obviously I'm just speculating about all this and could be completely wrong.

I agree - I have said things like this several times but I think that Sanderson has painted himself in a corner a little bit by planning some of this out too much. He feels like he's made promises and plans and needs to live up to them even if the creative energy isn't quite there or isn't leading him in the direction he thinks he needs to go based on his plans. He talks a lot about how he wants to follow the same format for every book and particularly for Stormlight he wants each book to be kind of multiple books within each book. It's a cool concept, but I think it's gotten away from him a little bit in the last few books. If I was going to say what I would like to be cut it would be things like this - Expanded Bridge Four sections in OB, The entire siege/occupation of Urithiru to be tightened up significantly somehow, Interludes not related to the main story of the Stormlight Archive. There have been some sections in the last two Stormlight books in particular where it feels like neither the plot nor character development is moving forward. If I had my wish - for SA6-SA10, I hope Sanderson scraps the idea of his format for the Stormlight books and just writes what he thinks is the best, what his creative sense tells him he should do. I think we've seen from the 4 secret projects that he does his best work when he's able to just write free and not be constrained by these massive interweaving plans and promises he makes to fans years in advance. So, if I had my choice - make it any length but write free Mr. Sanderson!

Well, I'm glad to hear your opinion on this one - could easily be that I'm reading it wrong. I just don't see it that way. For example in TWoK - Hoid/Wit is putting on a show - he's acting as the King's Wit and as such his role is to be kind of a jerk to all the nobles. We as the audience (and also all the in world characters) know that. And Sanderson makes a point that the good and wise characters don't find him annoying, but those who are immature at that point in the story (Adolin) or who are bad people (Sadeas & Co) really hate him. And then, when he's not playing as The King's Wit, he's shown as being kind to Kaladin. I actually really liked Hoid as he was written in TWoK, but lately he's gotten on my nerves. He's also built up among the fans as this super cool character, the one who's in all the cosmere stories. You see it a ton on this board, people hyped up about Hoid. You also have to imagine he's a bit of a darling for Sanderson - the character he inserted in his first books that tied everything together as one huge cosmere shared world series. That's my reading of it though. I like yours better, so maybe I'll try to think of it that way next time I read through the books.

For me - it bothered me because it breaks immersion in the world and because Hoid's voice when he's just being "him" is annoying. Hoid has this way of being cocky that is very annoying to me. I think it's because we're supposed to think as an audience that Hoid is cool, funny, and sophisticated because the writing is never skeptical of him (if that makes sense), but he comes across to me as full of himself. The reason to add "unnecessary sci-fi words" is to separate the world of the story from the real world. The Cosmere is supposed to be a world with no ties to the real world - it's not something like The Expanse or The Lord of the Rings which are (from the perspective of the story) events that are part of the real world. So, it doesn't make sense to include cultural references to our real world and it feels really out of place. It's the same reason that in Mistborn Era 2 Tarcsel invented "incandescent light" and not "the light bulb", or why people have "guns" and "rifles" but not "Colt .45's" or "Remington 1873 Repeating Rifles." It makes sense that the same kinds of things are going to exist in a fantasy world as the real world, but there are neutral ways of referring to them to say "yeah, this is pretty much that, but it's not exactly the same as what we have and this world has its own history of how they invented it." Basically the "unnecessary sci-fi words" are normal practice for Sanderson, so it feels bad he didn't use them here. Also, Sanderson's style of "whimsy" is mostly like nails on a chalkboard to me. I can barely tolerate Lift. Wayne and Lopen are not tolerable in 85% of their on screen time. I have a hard time explaining exactly why all this bothers me. I think it's because it feels like fanservice and also kind of like breaking the fourth wall - or at least knocking on it. Basically, it's taking the kinds of jokes and memes that SFF fans make about SFF characters, but giving those lines to the characters themselves. I think the intent is to make it feel like a putting up a flag and having the characters recognize that the scenarios in their world are sometimes a bit ridiculous. Some authors can pull this off really well and make it feel natural, others can't. And it is a matter of taste too. Sanderson's way of doing it is not to my taste, but other authors can do similar things without weirding me out. The example that comes to mind is Jim Butcher - for me he can get away with characters bumping up against breaking the fourth wall because of his style of writing, but Sanderson can't. At least not for me - I know there are plenty of people who enjoy Sanderson's humor and I'm not trying to say people who like it are bad or something. But it is just not for me.