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Exactly. I'll Holdem still while you do the stabbing .

Tldr; any Shard can give access to Surgebinding and that means Renarin is the most powerful mortal in the Cosmere (and now Rlain too) This is my first post here after recently and very heavily falling down the rabbit hole of the Cosmere after a friend recommended the books. Apologies if my ideas/theory are old hat or well-trodden. Along with being my favourite (mostly) non-viewpoint character, I can’t help but think there is something very important about Renarin and what he represents. We’ve known for a while that there is something “off” about his powers and this has been treated with suspicion by other characters in the story, to the point where Jasnah was prepared to execute her cousin. My argument here is that far from being “off”, Renarin’s powers are what Rosharan Surgebinding can be at its full potential. The theory relies on a few assumptions and assertions: 1) Odium is one sixteenth of God’s power. As such, it is neither “good” or “evil”, but simply a force in the universe. We think of Odium as being the “bad guy”. He does indeed seem pretty unpleasant: cruel, capricious, power-hungry and arrogant but I suspect this is more to do with Rayse than Odium itself. Sazed/Harmony thinks that it is the power that wishes to destroy. Hoid thinks differently. As much as I love Sazed (and in most debates I’d side with him) if it’s an argument against Hoid, I think Hoid might be in the right. We can see when Taravangian takes up Odium that he is able to consider the urges of the power in a different way. Cultivation also seems to think the right Vessel would be able to contain this force. Hoid tells us that Rayse was always a pretty bad guy. 2) Combining more Shards with Odium will temper its destructive Intent and create something different and almost certainly better. We know that the combination of Shards is possible (see Sazed/Harmony). As Frost tells us in the Second Letter; “He bears the weight of God’s own divine hatred, separated from the virtues that gave it context.” Giving context to this hatred will allow it to be channelled into something more productive. We can see the combination of Stormlight and Voidlight gives Warlight. There’s an assumption that if you were to combine Odium and Honor would get a new Shard called War (as Ruin and Preservation became Harmony). Many theorise that Dalinar will ascend to become this Shard at some point in our story. 3) Odium is as much a part of Roshar as Honor and Cultivation. We know that Roshar pre-dates the Shattering, so the Investiture of the planet arrived when Honor and Cultivation settled there. Odium has now been part of the Rosharan system for millenia, it’s reasonable to assume it’s Investiture has now saturated the place to enough of an extent that it is comparable to that of Honor and Cultivation. We can see this in the Singers’ use of Rhythms, they can attune to the Rhythms of Odium. Given that Roshar’s natives can attune to these Rhythms, we can be sure Odium is pretty much embedded in the planet. 4) Surgebinding and Voidbinding are two names of the same thing There is a thread on this forum about Division being Odium’s “truest surge” and one of the first objections was that Odium doesn’t have surges, he has Voidbinding. I found this point fairly meaningless. It seems obvious to me that the processes of Surgebinding and Voidbinding are the same process channelled through different Shards. The “surges” are described as the fundamental forces of the Cosmere which individuals can access through a splinter of a Shard (spren). R-Odium tells Dalinar he is preparing for “the [war] that will begin when the gods of other worlds discover the strength of Surgebinding” and earlier says that he is planning for combat with those that are “not nearly as well trained”. The implication of these two statements is that Surgebidng is available via any of the Shards. All they need to do is create spren of themselves and allow mortals in their domains to bond them. Let’s call this kind of magic “Investbinding”. The Knights Radiant are Investbinders who access the Surges through some combination of Honor and Cultivation in varying degrees. The Fused are Investbinders who access the Surges only through Odium. - So back to Renarin. We know Glys has been “Enlightened” by Sja-Anat. Enlightenment has a lot of meanings in Western culture, a whole philosophical movement is named after it. But if we take the literal meaning, “to make luminous”, in other words, to give Light; this might shed light (get it?) on what is going on. Glys has been granted access to Odium’s Light, in other words, Glys can allow Renarin to Investbind through Honor, Cultivation and Odium. I suspect there is a reason it was a Mistspren that was the first to do this. Truthwatchers are the mirror to Bondsmiths in the Surgebinding chart, i.e. furthest from Adhesion or Honor’s “truest surge”. It would be a spren that had the least influence from Honor that would be prepared to consider allowing Odium’s Light in. There are several implications if this theory is true, which I’ll outline in brief below, but the one I want to concentrate on here is what it means for Renarin’s powers. Renarin seems perfectly capable of using Progression (healing). He is also becoming increasingly proficient with Odium’s version of Illumination (his future-sight). However, he is still having issues with using Illumination in the way other Radiants (including other Truthwatchers) use it. My theory is that Progression is the “truest surge” of Cultivation and so Illumination is closer to Honor. Honor and Odium are especially at odds, and Odium’s light’s influence is making it difficult for him to use his Illumination in the way Shallan can. However, he can combine Cultivation and Odium’s version of Illumination and show what growth and future sight result in (Moash’s better self). However, Navani and Raboniel have shown us that with effort, you can combine Odium’s and Honor’s lights. So I am sure Renarin will get there eventually and be able to replicate Shallan’s version of Illumination. However, the crucial point is that he can access his surges in three different ways as opposed to the usual two. If Odium is correct and that Surgebinding is the strongest form of Investiture in the Cosmere that would mean the Renarin (and now Rlain too) is the potentially the most powerful mortal in the Cosmere, he can access two of the fundamental forces of the Cosmere in three different ways. If all the truespren are able to gain access to Odium’s Light then this will mean they can all grant three ways of accessing the fundamental forces of the Cosmere. It’s important to remember the first assumption I made here, that there is nothing “evil” about Odium. It’s just a force in the universe. It might mean that those spren that have access to Odium’s Light view the world in a slightly different way, but one of the themes of RoW was that spren can change and develop over time. They can evolve. Sja-Anat seems opposed to R-Odium’s goals. The origin is not their destiny. But more significantly, what this theory would imply is that each Shard could give even more Light. A Spren that comes into contact with Endowment could get another source of Light via Enlightenment. This is why the potential for spren to leave Roshar is so important for the Ghostbloods, we are talking about access to huge levels of power. So, to conclude this ramble, Renarin has access to two fundamental forces of the Cosmere in one more way than almost all others do. This makes his potential power level highest of every mortal we have met so far in the Cosmere Other implications of this theory The Shards can create many different types of Investiture. In theory Honor could use Allomancy and Endowment could use Surgebinding. The Old Magic might be the magic system Cultivation used before she got on board with Surgebinding. There may be an Honor-based magic system that predates Surgebinding If each Shard has a “truest surge” there should be 16 Surges, not 10 (I’ll admit this probably is a big problem with this theory)

You always did prefer stabbing to pokers

"Thank you, miss Louis," Wendy said, pulling on a regular waitress uniform that the woman had nabbed from the laundry. "Thanks for everything." "Oh, please, dear. There's no thanking about it." Louis smiled at her. "I wasn't much older than you myself when I had Ivian." "When you had--" Wendy blinked. "You're--" "Let me know if you need anything. I'm going to make sure that drunkard gets thrown in jail or... I dunno. At least gives you money." With that, Louis left.

Taln never broke. We don't know what happened but after the everstorm the oathpact was fully broken and he escaped/was released/who knows. But he still hasn't broken. Questioner Taln. Did he actually ever give up? Or was it... Did he just get released when...? Brandon Sanderson You will find out, but Taln did not break. You'll find out how it happened, but Taln did not break.

I, huh, really? I have a hard time accepting that because the Metallic Arts have no visible commonalities, compare S-Illumination and V-Illumination, both have obvious effects related to light/waveforms, thus we'd expect A-steel, F-steel and H-steel to share some commonality, relating either to Pushing, speed or physical allomancy, for most of the metals there doesn't seem to be a common theme, no rhyme nor reason as to why this metal fills this function across magic systems. We can make educated guesses about most of the powers of Voidbinding (Tension, Division ), because we can, based on Renarin, conclude that they will have effects in line with Surgebinding and how it expresses Surges. We wouldn't expect V-Tension to enable Soulcasting, as that is not in line with being an expression of Tension. On the other hand, if you handed someone a feruchemy chart and gave them a thorough explanation of the Metallic Arts, leaving out which metals perform which function in the other two, then asked them to, based on this information, fill in the metals on the other charts, could they reliably conclude which metals actually do what? Seeing as there tends to, aside from tin, be very little relation between what the metals do in each system, I'd hazard a no. Does that make sense? ¤_¤

I disagree with that assumption. First there almost no chances combining Ruin and Odium will not create something even more dangerous and second there are more than one way to fuse to Shards, for example we know there's another possible combination of Ruin and Preservation called Discord. You fuse Honour and Odium in a way that use Honour to temper Odium but you could also fuse them in a way that use Honour to fuel Odium The spren with the least influence from Honour are Cultivationsprens, not Mistpsrens. And the fact Tumi was singing the Rhythm of War imply it's his Cultivation part that was transformed

Cool - thank you - I didn't know about that WoB. I guess that mean the relevance of "truest surge" is much lower in terms of whats going on with Renarin's powers. So I think I should have been more precise in my original post. I am not saying Voidbinding and Surgebinding are the exact same thing. I am saying they are different versions of the same overarching magic system. So like Allomancy, Hemalurgy and Feruchemy are three different versions of The Metallic Arts, filtered through Preservation, Ruin and a combination of the two respectively. Raboniel tells us clearly that the Fused access the Surges: "We of the Fused know our Surge with an intimacy a Radiant will never know." (RoW, Chp 31) The Fused are accessing the Surges through Odium and the Radiants are accessing them through Honor and Cultivation. I think the problem is that we call what the Radiants do "Surgebinding" instead of Honor-binding and Culti-binding (for obvious reasons given how ugly those words are). I think Odium's line at the end of RoW about other Shards discovering the strength of Surgebinding is the key one. The implication is that there is a version of this overall magic system that uses the suffix "binding" that can be filtered through each of the Shards. My fundamental point is that as things stand, Renarin and Rlain are the only two beings we know of who can access their surges through three different Shards. The implication of that is that their potential power level is higher than that of most everyone else.

Thank you! Good I'm glad I haven't completely got the wrong end of the stick. So what makes you say this? As far as I can tell the Heavenly Ones are granted the "surge" of Gravitation through Odium and Kaladin accesses it through (mostly) Honor. The same fundamental force is accessed through two different Shards. I agree they are not "the same thing" in the sense the pathway is different, but they are resulting in the same effect. Yup - I'm guessing that's what has been called the Old Magic So as I said, this is probably the biggest problem with my theory. I'm not sure what you mean by a distinction. What I would say is; I spent Final Empire assuming there were at most 11 metals. Then by the time of BoM not only are there 16 (plus the god metals) and there are increasingly crazy ways of manipulating those metals. I guess I'm ready for Brandon to pull the rug out from under me again on the Surges.

So, there has been a lot of debate about the Recreance recently. I feel there are a few specific things we can say are very likely, however, and I'm making this post to sum those up. TL;DR: The Recreance likely occurred on a single day — or at least during a very small time period — shortly after the imprisonment of Ba-Ado-Mishram, and during or soon after the abandonment of Urithiru, which had already begun to fail before said imprisonment. The Feverstone Keep vision is accurate: Mishram's capture happened immediately before the Recreance: Moat of the Knights abandoned their oaths on the same day: Urithiru was likely "failing" before Mishram's capture (though this is not certain): Tanavast's death was post-Recreance, but was a protracted event Confirmed by WoB[17] Either the enslavement of the broken singers didn't happen for decades, or the Recreance was decades apart from BAM's capture References:

I'm not sure how necessary it is to take all of the terms fully literally. To me taking up a crown could mean literally picking up a crown or it could mean taking up a position of high authority/leadership. Title could refer to Herald or Shard or something else. I have no idea what the tower could refer to beyond the Uritheru. And as has been mentioned above the spear seems self explanatory. Jezrien or Shard for Kaladin seem like the most likely interpretations of that death rattle. But hey its speculation. Is there anything else out there that could fit that interpretation?

Shouldn't, say, Shallan have remarked on him glowing at the end of WoR though, when he's definitely seeing something? Also, it's been pointed out on Shardcast that we've never seen any other example of someone Surgebinding unwillingly, uncosciously, yes, against their express wishes, no. So it would be odd of this was an actual ability he was using but couldn't control. I don't know, possibly because actively using the ability takes more effort? Possibly because it's not actually a vision, but the recreation of a vision? Oh? -Rhythm of War, chapter 111 He doesn't get a vision? ¤_¤

The four men regarded one another for what seemed like an eternity as sweat dripped down Caden's brow, he couldn't afford to watch every little detail of his three opponents' movements, so he sufficed for watching them as a group. The general recalled how he had them drilled endlessly on working as a single unit to overpower their enemies, so watched for tells that he would recognize. A twitch of the arm there, a shift of a stance there, the men revealing their first moves while still deciding on them. The men of the Praetorium Guard snapped forward, and their blades began to whistle through the air. Caden growled as he allowed himself to be pushed on the defensive, there being too many blades for him to defend against and attack. The men moved smoothly, one attacking the general directly, while the other two tried to get around his guard on either side. Caden shifted to his left quickly, advancing on that man and placing him between the general and the rest of the guardsmen as quickly as he could. He struck quickly and brutally, aiming to tear away the man's defenses before the other two could get in to help. The fight shifted as the man did everything he could to defend himself, waiting but a moment for the others to get around and flank Caden once more. They would continue this maneuver until they wore Caden down, knowing their numbers offered them an undeniable advantage. However, Caden knew this very tactic well. Just as the men were closing in on Caden's flanks, he performed a large sweeping motion with his blade to ward the men off, but instead they smelled vulnerability as the general lowered his guard. They moved in rapid succession to strike beneath Caden's blade, just as he nearly finished his sweep. However, instead of stopping, he let the momentum carry him forward as he lunged towards the man in the middle, catching him off-guard as Caden batted away the flat portion of the man's blade with his arm, tackling him to the ground. The second the man touch the ground, Caden knocked his head with his knee, and rolled to his feet, grinning at the two other men as they tried to strike as wolves fighting in a pack, defending their downed man. He shifted his stance to face off against the man on the right, lunging towards him and driving the two men apart. He cleanly deflected a blow from the left before shifting back to his right, committing himself to a brutal attack that left him open to the man to his left. He swung his blade to strike at the man at his right, but shifted his footing at the last moment when he heard the whistling of a blade to his left, redirecting the momentum to strike the man firmly on his padded blade arm while he was trying to recover from the heavy swing. He dropped to a knee, gasping in pain while the man to Caden's right suddenly started a desperate offensive to redirect the general's attention. Caden met the man blow for blow before easily overpowering the one man in a few moments, causing the third blade to drop to the ground. General Praetorium stood for a moment in his sweat, catching his breath while his men quickly got to their feet before saluting their commanding officer.

That makes for the best discussion I am sorry if this did upset you @Unite Them Dalinar perhapse, Fallen Tittle - Bondsmith/Radiant/Honor, Tower - Finding Urithiru, Crown - Ruling Alethkar, albeit indirectly, Spear - Kaladin

You might be right. I of course have a bias toward my own interpretation (and for instance for a long time held that what Renarin did couldn't be Voidbinding, as it was too similar to Surgebinding, unlike the metallic arts, which are very dissimilar, imo), but I see where you're coming from, I think. It might simply be that SA has mostly given us similarities thus far, of course. I think we'll have to agree to disagree for now, the Metallic Arts are, from my point of view, too dissimilar to be treated as the same kind of framework as the Surges, as the ways surges manifest seems more consistent than how the nature of the metal influences the magic. Also, aluminium isn't an enigma in feruchemy, it, for some bizzare reason, has a valid interaction with the magic system that isn't just a magnified null. ¤_¤

Not the puffy Allrianne This character is funny This character is a follower This character prefers a certain color This character has been in allegiance with at least 3 different people (I have one more clue plus a bonus if nobody gets it this time)

The visions that come to him unbidden require Light? I know he uses Light when he deliberately "re-plays" one, but nothing of the sort is indicated about when he just sees the stained glass images around him. Also, I believe Rlain gets the same type of vision when he's in no position to have Light. ¤_¤

Yeah, but it's not like Death Rattles are known for being literal, now are they.

It is not the loyal Sylphrena

When do we see other Knights accessing each individual Surge in two different ways? Edgedancers with Progression is the only time I can think of this happening, with Growth vs Regrowth, and I think it's plausible to kind of fit those under the same umbrella. I disagree with this. I think his futuresight is his resonance. It's a passive thing that appears to require no Light and can be related in a way to both of his powers but at the same time is more than just a combination of the two. I think the lights he makes are his Illumination, though we don't really know what the heck those do yet besides "strange, unnatural things sometimes" (unclear if this is referring to what he did against Moash or not). I could buy the Moash thing being either an extension of those lights and so V-Illumination, or essentially being his Reverse Lashing equivalent. Worth noting, Fused are considered Surgebinders, not Voidbinders: Agreed. To quote a WoB (emphasis mine): As you kind of get at later, I don't think we can define ratios for the spren so easily. Imo, it's not two types of Investiture with one Intent each, it's one type of Investiture with one Intent (which is made up from two others a la resonances). So you can't, say, split an honorspren into Honor and Cultivation easily (there's probably some way to sort of do it, but I don't think it's directly splitting it in that way, I think it's kinda weirder than that), because it's not made of separate Honor and Cultivation. It's a piece of Investiture with the Intent of, say, protection or something in that vein, which contains elements of both Honor and Cultivation but is not quite either, they're changed to work together as one whole. You can argue the Intent is closer to one Shard than another, but you can't directly split it into something like "80% Honor, 20% Cultivation".

It's definitely one way to do it, and a great way to protect against all kinds of foreign Investiture. And the Scadrians can do something almost nobody else in the Cosmere can do, which is draw nearly unlimited Investiture directly from the Spiritual Realm, so they dont need to be at all miserly about it's use. Stormlight, Breathes, or even Dor that have already been Imported (in specific quantities) from the the spiritual realm. The only thing that comes close so far is the Bondsmith ability to combine the realms.

It is not the humorous Lightsong Nor the faithful Llarimar

We're playing Texas Holdem, right. This is just poker with extra murder

Lightsong?

Bit expensive but will be worth it I think if the kinks/bugs/good reviews etc are ironed out by the time I’m ready for it. I’ve enjoyed these 3 games and the wait on those older ones coming to console is to long. The way I play I ll get my $ worth for sure. I ll dock it instead of going handheld.

“You’re probably right,” said Cole. As he looked closer towards the body he saw that the man wore a golden watch. “No use leaving that for the worm’s.” thought Cole as he slipped it off. Cole was about to start going through the many pockets in the strange fine-quality coat this man was wearing when something caught the corner of his eye. “Rusts” he whispered. It was the projectile that had killed the man. Cole originally assumed that it was a poison dart or something similar in making but there was something different about this. It was glowing. Faintly and with the tiniest bit of light but glowing nonetheless. Now Cole didn’t know very much about projectiles and such but he did know that he had never seen one glowing. So doing what pickpockets do best he reached down to take it. Sure he might have been messing up a crime scene but no officials were going to come by and everyone else who might care were looking for the person who did it. Besides, something about the glowing just made him want to look at it closer. Something with the… Cole’s thoughts were cut off as he heard a voice behind him, “Sir?” Cole turned around to see a woman who seemingly came out of nowhere and was now talking to the bouncer, “My b-brother and I—” Then with tears cutting off her sentence Cole see’s her get up see the corpse and then faint. “Ah Rusts,” said Cole, “Can this day get any worse?”

That.... isn't commanding something to change. I don't see how this can be interpreted as a command to not change. BoM 5:

Well first off any Shard can give access to any magic system, so you are right on that point. However Voidbinding and Surgebinding are not the same thing anymore than Feruchemy and allomancy are. Cultivation has a magic system independent of Surgebinding There are only ten surges and only the Rosharan ones would have a distinction. Welcome to the Shard

If I had to choose one of these options, I'd say it was more the former. But I don't think I would describe it as an either/or. I think it can be both. There were ongoing and growing fears that spiked at a certain point (the imprisonment of BAM I think), prompting a "decision in the heat of the moment by the spren and their knights" as Brandon said in the recent WoB. Let's just set the scene. The False Desolation is ongoing and the KR are fighting singers with forms of power and Voidlight provided by BAM. The Heralds are MIA. We know that the generation of Radiants that committed the Recreance learned the truth about humankind's origins. They learned that humans had originally come from Ashyn but had destroyed Ashyn through Surgebinding. They learned that humans were the invaders in the war with the singers over Roshar. Honor was going mad and/or dying. And so, rather than reassuring them that their cause was righteous as he had with previous generations, Honor raved and told them they would destroy Roshar just as they had Ashyn. There's also friction between the Radiants and the rest of the world, and in-fighting between the orders. Oh, and the Sibling has lost trust in humans and is expelling them from Urithiru. So imagine all of that going on and then the imprisonment of Ba-Ado-Mishram happens. This tears out the the Connection and Identity of an entire species, leaving them shells of beings. We're also told in RoW that the imprisonment wounded Roshar itself and "touched the souls of all who belong to Roshar. Spren too." So this would have included all of the Radiant spren, who are bound to the spirit web of Roshar. (in RoW 75, Vaiu tells Adolin that "Deadeyes cannot think, but they are still spren - bound to the spiritweb of Roshar herself.") And because the Nahel bond involves linking the spirits of spren and human, one imagines that the Knights might have felt something too. So imagine, already burdened with worries about the dangers of the Nahel bond and the Surgebinding it allows, the KR and their spren witness/feel the extent of the damage that can be done with powerful Surgebinding. So now you've got a concrete example of harm to go with the existing fears. I can buy that that freaked them out enough that they acted rashly, thinking they needed to make sure they put a stop to Radiant Surgebinding right away. As a postscript on BAM's imprisonment and its relation to deadeyes, I'll note that I think BAM Connected to all of the singers by Connecting to some portion/aspect of Roshar itself. And as I noted above, spren are connected to the spirit web of Roshar. So when BAM was imprisoned, I think some crucial Spiritual aspect of Roshar (maybe something to do with how Honor's Investing in Roshar created sapient spren?) was also sealed away and therefore torn away from the spren. This made the Radiant sprens' spiritual Connections to their Knights all the more crucial, and when the Knights foresook their oaths, that left the Radiant sprens' minds untethered, causing the deadeye phenomenon. Ooohh, running with this idea that BAM's imprisonment messed with whatever Honor did to create sapient spren, what if before the imprisonment, spren were able to come to the Physical Realm without giving up their minds? Do we know whether that's always been the case? Might explain a bit of what happened with Adolin and Maya - maybe it was him forging a Connection with her and then sharing his mind with her while in the the Cognitive Realm that allowed her to regain some level of sapience.

https://www.17thshard.com/news/shardcast/shardcast-shallans-past-r737/ 1.1 Steps Forward 1Step Back After the Shallan's Past Shardcast I've been thinking about Brandon's comment regarding how Shallan is progressing and the things she's able to do before she should be able to in WoK and WoR (Soulcasting, and seemingly summoning Pattern in the Chasm). https://wob.coppermind.net/events/452/#e14526 The only thing that makes sense to me is if she progressed to at least the third level as a child, broke her oaths, but Testament is still around and connected to her a bit which allows Shallan to temporarily get back to those same levels to do things she used to. To put it another way her bond is spiking back up to where it used to be but only briefly, it's doing this: Because she broke her Oaths she went back to near zero for a long time, but she's progressing again and once in a while her Bond will spike up to where it used to be and she can say summon what seems to be Pattern in the chasm before she's said enough Truths on the page unless we really contort to find Truths. She already reached those levels, her spiritweb was altered, Testament still exists and is bonded to her in some way, the bond is more deflated than broken. Think of how Dalinar sees the Oathpact as 9 thin golden lines and one robust line for Taln who did not break his Oath. Or think of it as a "groove" that a Cryptics investiture can still fill. I think both Testament and Pattern are filling up that deflated original bond / "groove" that makes it easier for her to spike back, I think Pattern is mostly filling it now, but Testament is also filling it a bit. I don't have much to go on beyond my gut, but to me it is the simplest answer that fits with what we've seen.

Hi [email protected] and welcome to the shard! It's always great to meet "new" readers here from all over the world! What is your favorite book and character and why? Anyway, have fun here!

Hello! Welcome to the Shard!

Kaladin.

I agree this will be Szeth watching Shinovar get wrecked and the sea flooding in. I think it will be from Division being used at large scale to wreak the mountains and perhaps the land which will allow the sea to flood in. I don't think there will be another storm that covers everything though. I think we've seen what this one refers to already. The storm that never stops is referring to the Everstorm as in forever, never stopping. Like a mistranslation from a dying person not fully understanding what they are witnessing. I think this reaction of "he has won" is very similar to the Stormfather's reaction after the Everstorm comes at the end of WoR. This most likely refers to the Unmade taking over the palace in Kholinar during OB. There is a dome of gloom that covers the palace.

I reeeeaaaallly like this. "You're worth more than what you can give to other people."

We don't know the exact terms of the Oathpact but we do have confirmation of this. It couldn't be that they just didn't think of the terms to their logical conclusion... that's just... Anyway, thankfully we know that this idea wouldn't work anymore. As per Odium and Dalinar's meeting over the terms in RoW, the Oathpact is broken, the Fused can be reborn in the Everstorm.

I'm trying to remember. Is that the only part of the oathpact? Or are there other parts that are, for lack of a better term, broken? Because now that I think about it more, the oathpact seems like an awful idea, and I'm not sure why anyone would agree to it, much less 10 people. Unless they were drunk at the time. And you people now have me picturing a scene where Dalinar and Ishar have their heads together, trying to figure out a way to fix the oathpact, and they're whispering quietly to each other, and suddenly they turn and look at Kaladin, and Kal just points to them and goes, "**** you," and Dalinar tries to appeal to Kaladin's honor, and he just replies "I'm going to find Moash."

I'm going to take a different path on this one - I think 5th ideal will have to do with the Leadership aspect of the Windrunners in conjunction with the Protection theme. I don't know the right words to put it in a simple phrase, but basically as a leader of a group that is charged with protecting people in general, you might have to send someone on a mission where they will almost certainly die, in order to protect. So I'm thinking something around acknowledging that he may have to give an order that someone else e.g. another Knight sacrifice themselves to protect others. I think if phrased or contextualized correctly it can still fit with the first ideal. And would be a hard one for Kaladin. It is further than 4th ideal because it's not just not being able to protect someone but actually having to make a decision or order more actively. And fits with some of Lirin's triage type lessons. I think of this one a lot around an episode of Star Trek TNG where Troi is taking a test to become a bridge officer, the final exam there's a horrible disaster and to pass you have to be willing to give an order that would send a crewmate to get it shut down and save everyone, into an area they'll get exposed to lethal doses. https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Bridge_Officer's_Test

I'm torn between "I will not protect others from the trials they need to grow strong" and Factfinder's suggestion of "I will accept the protection of my allies when I cannot protect myself". I feel like either one could make a logical capstone for the Windrunner ideals we have seen.

I've been meaning to come check back up on this topic... Going to do a few replies below, after saying something of my own that I wanted to add... Inspired by this new WoB: This is pretty intriguing... I take it to mean that "I killed my spren" IS a truth in some sense. At the very least it is... some kind of step toward restoration, right? It's not just words that have no meaningful relation to her advancement as a Radiant. I'm struggling to make much of it beyond that though. When we thought Shallan originally killed Pattern, the general assumption was that she had to swear new truths to restore their bond, right? This whole thing about "reconstructing old oaths" is weird though. At face value, I'd think it means that she needs to basically re-accept truths that she had already accepted in the past. But "killed my father," "killed my mother," and "killed my spren" (that third being explicitly noted here as a "reconstruction step") are all things she couldn't really have expressed in the past. They all happened at the end of her bond with Testament. Best I can guess is... maybe in the past she spoke truths that were simply related to her father, mother, and/or spren? So now she's just saying updated truths involving those relationships? I dunno, that's weird. I will say that I could EASILY see "I'm terrified" as a truth she spoke as a child and then re-swore in TWoK. This WoB feels somewhat problematic to my theory, the way I think about it, simply for the way it suggests all of her advancement in the books boils down to restoring something she lost. This doesn't really make sense to me with Pattern being a totally new bond. Some people have argued she killed Testament AND regressed with Pattern at a young age, and that would kind of work well with what Brandon's saying here. But that doesn't make sense to me for WAY too many reasons in the book. So I guess I'm just overthinking the stuff here about what "reconstructing" means. Yeah! I should have included that in my post. I think most of us have generally taken that WoB to imply that she needed to acknowledge her bond (such as by starting to summon her Shardblade) before she could use a Surge like she did. Everything indicates that Testament is the Blade she intended to summon here, so this suggests it's her Testament bond involved with Soulcasting there. I think it's more likely the bond with Pattern began in TWoK, but I don't think we have undeniable evidence for any particular timeline on this. I DO think he was present at the time Testament was broken, and I think it's entirely possible he was interested in bonding her at that point. But forming a Radiant bond is a two-way street. Shallan shut down her bond with Testament pretty hard. I'm extremely skeptical Pattern could have essentially forced a bond on her during that time. It wasn't until TWoK that Shallan became open to that (again). These have all been questions for many years now. Only difference now is that we know the bond was with Testament rather than Pattern. To address them though... 1) Brandon has confirmed that you needn't be "broken" for a Radaint bond. It helps, but it isn't required. Also, the timing given in RoW suggests that Shallan formed her bond with Testament when she was 9 years old, not 4-5. (She killed her mother at 11.) As for whether Shallan was "broken" at the time, we'll have to RAFO. I could see her being legitimately broken at a young age though. Heck, for all we know her parents were both abusive. 2) I don't think we can really answer the question of "Why would Cryptics do X." They're WEIRD. 3) Again, can't answer this without know more about BOTH Shallan's past AND why Cryptics think the way they do. That said, I don't think we have to assume all Lightweaver truths have to be Deep Dark Terrible Secrets. I imagine most Lightweavers have rather mundane truths about self-awareness. We've simply seen some dramatic truths from Shallan during the books because ever since she killed her mother her lift has been particularly dramatic.

The deep problem is to me that we are accepting the official reason for the Recreance without questioning. And that is just not plausible. People who have been fighting a war for years just do not all react in panic to the destruction of the enemy. Many, possibly even a majority, would have reacted quite simply with relief and even joy to know that this proble is solved once and for all. And some among the orders would have refused. What would the Windrunners who dropped their Shards do against those who refused? And there really is no reason they would have to do it simutaneously. They could have drawn straws and let a few unfortunates try it out. No. It really looks like the Recreance was not purely a reaction, but a planned action with a desired effect, that is there was a reason rooted in the oaths or the nature of Roshar that meant that they had to take the risk under all conditions and that had an aim. Logically we may assume that they wanted to undo something that happened due to the capture of Ba-Ado-Mishram, yet for some reason just releasing Ba-Ado-Mishram was not an option either.

One important fact I would remind others: Testament is a name of convenience given to Shallan's first Cryptic only at the very end of RoW. Her original name was Pattern, because all Cryptic's names are Pattern (referring to different patterns, but to human speech their names are all the same). Thus when reading Shallan's dialogue and thoughts in the earlier books, any time she says or thinks "Pattern" there is intentional ambiguity about which she is referring. Thus, when Shallan activates the Oathgate and calls out to Pattern, this doesn't necessarily mean she wasn't using Testament. I'm of the opinion that Shallan is using Testament as her sword all throughout WoR. In fact her first time summoning Pattern as a sword is in Oathbringer Chapter 15 when Adolin requests to see the sword and Shallan has a somewhat unexplainable panic attack. Pattern initially comments Implying something important was being done when summoning Pattern as a sword for Adolin. Eventually she creates the Radiant persona to abate the panic attack. The panic attack and generating of a new persona make more sense in the context of RoW: Shallan is about to summon a shardblade that is distinct from the one she was previously using, and she can't confront that reality yet. This is also the same chapter where Pattern drops his disturbing line: “It’s because you hate me,” Pattern said softly. “I can die, Shallan. I can go. They will send you another to bond.” e: Another point. Testament's spren friend mentioned finding her on an island far to the east. It's the Shattered Plains Oathgate platform, the last location Shallan summoned Testament.

Why? It was glowing, it was drastically changing shape and size for Shallan's convenience, and she even thought to herself that she couldn't use Pattern to move around illusions like she did on previous occasions due to... something, which turned out to be that he was the shardblade she lent to Kaladin. And that was at the time when she believed that Pattern was separate from "the fruit of her sin". She didn't want to aknowledge that Pattern could be a shardblade. If Testament's blade was already so much more "alive", then shouldn't she have been more like RoW Mayalaran in the Cognitive realm? I also don't think it likely that Shallan was further than on her second Truth/Third Ideal as a child. IMHO, it wouldn't make sense, given the fact that higher Ideals tend to be much more difficult and painful and require deep soul-searching. A child shouldn't be capable of doing this, they are still too malleable and changing too much.

Truth #4: "I killed everyone! Roshar has been an illusion this whole time!"

Me too bro. Me too.