Ari

I'd have to dig deep to find it, but I recall there being a WoB about Spren on Roshar pre-dating the arrival of Honour and Cultivation, so that likely has something to do with why they're so visible there, too.

he should clearly be an immortal worldhopper who is unsuccessfully trying to suicide, to explain why he shows up everywhere.

Well, Odium has been to more places in the cosmere than readers have to date apparently, so it's possible some of these instances of the word "passion" cropping up relate to him, I'd caution against that somewhat as you still want things that either correlate to either things that involve hatred themselves or involve inspiring hatred in others. I'd also note that there may well be some religions around inspired by Odium that might actually not be under his indirect control anymore, as the downside of his strategy to move around a lot and to not tie his investiture too closely to any one planet is that he's probably relying largely on either splinters or minions to enforce his intent on his operations outside his current sphere of influence, and there's no guarantee his institutions won't just overthrow them if possible! While it might be worth digging up a couple of likely candidates to ask Brandon about at signings or in online Q&As/conversations with Brandon, this is probably something we'll RAFO about.

This is one of those cases where the answer is old enough that it's probably gotten a bit buried! We have a WoB on this, and the answer is that dichotomy in meaning of the word odium between hatred itself and one who inspires hatred in others isn't supposed to be too ambiguous, as both apply to the Shard in question. See here: https://wob.coppermind.net/events/105/#e1146 This is part of why he self-identifies as Passion in Oathbringer: he doesn't just want to further hatred. He has specific goals that will make him a figure to be hated, and he welcomes that consequence, similar to how certain modern politicians are when they attack the media. I'd say Hoid's statements on how dangerous (you could reframe this as "powerful" if you like) Rayse and Odium as a pairing are is reliable, and that Odium himself might even agree with it if framed in neutral terms. And the desire to smash all the other shards is almost certainly coming from Rayse, as the refusal to ever modify his personality by picking up a second shard seems more the sort of thing we'd expect from Autonomy's Intent, even though it's strictly compatible with Odium if you view it as hatred of other personality types.

That was my first thought. My second, really crazy additional thought, was that Doomslug was the original pilot of M-bot and the empty space nearby is just a maintenance compartment for the pilot to work on the interface device.

I thought it was really obvious that it was either (1) or (2), and my personal money was on (2), with Autonomy in mind, that he may have been addressing the Stormfather as essentially Tanavast's ghost, and this was Odium reacting to the invocation of Honour's perpendicularity, which he might have thought impossible with Tanavast dead. As to your objection to why Dalinar says he's Unity, I'll go back to the full context here: Dalinar is answering Venli's question when he says he's Unity, and he's referring to his role as a Bondsmith and unifier, not to any sort of Shard-related ascension, IMO. He arguably might be referring to the Stormfather's identity as a splinter of honour and therefore his role as the Stormfather's Bondsmith, but that's the closest you could get to any shard-related shenanigans here. I do think "the voice" is also obviously Evi forgiving Dalinar. I'm just not sure that Odium is responding to Evi in any way.

Oh, sure, there's no doubt that plan was to end his prison, but it failed. What I'm saying is that Odium's prison being gone doesn't mean he isn't going to stick around on Roshar until all his business is concluded, and if he does leave before the Stormlight Archive is finished, I expect it to be in the intermission between the two halves of the series. Just like Dalinar et all aren't going to win anything too huge until book 5, they're also unlikely to lose anything too badly until then, either. @ZenBossanova: That's a very relevant WoB, cheers. Interesting that brandon is undecided on the question of whether it's hemalurgy, I would have said it's at least a roshar-local variant on it, but apparently he's thinking it could also be something a bit more fundamental either to Shards or to realmatics in general.

Sure. He'll have long-term goals or plans, and short-term ones that are intended to last him through the Stormlight Archive. The long-term ones are only relevant if he survives SA, which we should wait and see about.

Is Frost simply wrong then, when he refers to Odium as "God's divine hatred?" It could be that Frost is underselling the nuance to Odium's overall Intent, which includes some degree of wider emphasis on emotion, and I'm on-board with that in context of OB. But Frost specifically says (at least some of) the Hatred inherent to Odium as he is now comes from Adonalsium, so we need a Reason Why Frost Is Wrong to go any further than "Frost neglected to mention that there is more to Odium than just hate." (and the reason for the lesser hypothesis should be obvious: Frost and Hoid are both likely to already know that, so aren't going to discuss it in great detail unless they need to in order to make a point in their own discussion. The greater hypothesis you're claiming, however, would require Frost being mistaken or deliberately lying to Hoid) We have a WoB from well before OB that says that Odium's Intent is bi-directional: that is, he doesn't just hate others, he wants to inspire their hatred, too.

You don't think it'd be easier to break humanity knowing that they can never end his desolation? If his goal is escape, (unclear at this point whether he'd up and leave if he was let free, given his convos with Dalinar in OB I'm less inclined to that idea than I was after WoR) there's no guarantee he doesn't want to "win" on Roshar to see if he can't undermine or shatter Cultivation while doing so.

Ah, I see, we were talking about gemstones because you were dictionary-bashing. Gemstone is a word that includes two things- minerals that are gems, and stones that look nice that are used in jewellery. Those stones called gemstones exist, but you will note that none of these are called out as being containers for Stormlight. It's not an impossible theory but you'd/Brandon would really be pushing things to get there based on gems being "stones." That's a bit like claiming water is a salt because of seawater.

Thanks for the correction, I had assumed she was simply unmentioned. Well, she doesn't actually say that she's looking for him in connection with Nightblood's transport, but it's a reasonable implication. It's not 100%, but it is well over 90% IMO.

How would stone be the focus on Roshar? All signs point towards the relevant factors being highstorms as sources of gaseous investiture, gemstones as repositories for it, and Spren bonds as the relevant factor for initiation, or possibly even the focus itself.

While I'm inclined to agree that Odium probably intends to keep the spirit of the agreement, I will note that just because he says he'll keep the spirit of the agreement doesn't mean he isn't lying. Also, by saying that Odium will keep the spirit of the agreement, that implies he likely expects Taravangian to do the same: Those born as Kharbranthians and ONE spouse each will be saved, lol.

Yeah, this was my guess elsewhere- Odium is making a play to make the desolations permanent by trapping the souls of the heralds so that they can't ressurect, essentially a direct opposite of Jasnah's strategy, and a counterpart to what Dalinar did to Nergaoul. Could be! It's entirely possible that this is actually compatible with the theory above- Odium's recruitment of human collaborators has allowed him to go after the dawnshards when he previously couldn't.