Banazir864

In addition to the different forms of Investiture, mundane weapons (or devices that parallel mundane weapons) could demolish a Shardbearer if they're advanced enough. And if you're talking about sufficiently long-range weapons or, better still, aircraft (which could still count as one-on-one if they're single-person aircraft), the Shardbearer wouldn't even be able to fight back. Imagine, say, a real-life military drone flying in and attacking a Shardbearer. Or, if you want to stick with tech we've already seen in the Cosmere, one of the Malwish flying a single-person airship and dropping bundles of dynamite. Sunlit Man spoilers: So the answer includes anyone with the right technology and the training to use it.

There's a Returned out there who's gone insane from his immortality and spends his time worldhopping around and Awakening random objects just to mess with the locals.

TSM spoilers So, based on that, I think it's definitely possible to have a "disease" (in the sense of a contagious affliction) that requires Connection to spread, although it would likely require something more than a mundane physical disease. I suppose you could also have a physical disease that ordinary people are immune to and also have a contagious Connection-dependent affliction of the soul that leaves you vulnerable to the disease, in which case you could loosely describe the disease as being spread by Connection.

I knew they weren't as strong as other forms of Investiture, but I wasn't expecting the exchange rate to be this horrible. Brandon wasn't kidding when he said that Vasher could get Investiture more easily on Roshar. At first I thought that just meant that getting Investiture from regular highstorms was easier than getting it from people on Nalthis, but no, the difference in quantities is massive, too. Based on how many BEUs it takes Nomad to heal even relatively minor wounds, it seems like leaving a single basket of spheres in a highstorm on Roshar can give you as much Investiture as Drabbing a small city on Nalthis. No wonder Vasher and Vivienna decided to change worlds.

At one point, Nomad implied that the only thing stopping Aux from becoming a clock is the fact that he (Nomad) didn't know enough about how clocks are built. Clocks have numerous different parts, so this further supports the theory that the "single object" limit is based on what the user perceives as a single object rather than the physical geometry of the object.

Cosmere spoilers

To be clear, I don't mean to speak about Eastern cultures in general that put pressure on children. I was talking about Liyun in particular, and her treatment of Yumi---particularly the way she shames Yumi even for succeeding. I don't doubt that many parents (Eastern and even Western) are overly hard on their children out of a genuine desire to see them succeed. I just don't see any concern about Yumi in Liyun. Concern about the dignity of yoki-hijo, and maintaining traditional yoki-hijo against the reform movement and the machine, certainly, but that's the religious fanaticism I referred to, ruining an innocent's life to prove that your way of doing things is superior. Liyun outright tells Yumi she's not really a person. While Liyun's treatment of Yumi may draw inspiration from certain Eastern parenting tactics, she goes far beyond that, effectively acting as a slaver who instead of telling the slaves "you don't get a life because you're subhuman" adds gaslighting by instead saying "you don't get a life because you're superhuman and you're a horrible person for not being grateful for that." I can see how she might remind you of more well-intentioned women in your life, and there may be a superficial resemblance there, but I don't see anything to suggest that Liyun in particular cares about Yumi as anything more than an essential tool of her religion, and if maintaining the traditional yoki-hijo requires tormenting the actual person, Liyun is more than happy to do so.

While I appreciate your thoughtful analysis, I disagree that there was any genuine love or kindness in Liyun's treatment of Yumi. The fact that Liyun not only emotionally abused Yumi when she strayed from Liyun's standards, but even poisoned Yumi's successes (e.g., getting 37 spirits) to try to make Liyun feel guilty and ashamed makes her irredeemable in my eyes. Liyun wasn't just "raising [Yumi] to a high standard" but raising her to a deliberately impossible standard where even when she performed above expectations, she was guilt-tripped to keep her self-loathing and subservient. And it only gets worse when you discover that most of the other yoki-hijo are able to do almost as well without a lifetime of torture and isolation. At best, she is a religious fanatic, willing to subject an innocent girl to a fate worse than slavery (at least slaves can usually have friends and family) and/or a Machiavellian who has no qualms about tormenting an innocent for the "greater good." Liyun may have had some affection for Yumi, but the only way you could claim that she actually cared for her is if you assume that Liyun was similarly abused by her own parents or guardians and didn't know any better. To Liyun, Yumi was just a tool to produce needed goods and prove that Liyun's denomination of their religion was superior.

At first I misread your post as "Gavinor" and thought this was that theory again. So, kudos for a new and creative theory. But, yeah, I agree that this is unlikely. If Odium had Gavilar all this time, why didn't he bring him out earlier? Think of the chaos it would cause if Gavilar came back and demanded the crown, especially if he was secretly working for Odium. And it's not like Rayse would have been saving Gavilar to be a surprise champion: As some of the other posters have noted, that line from Taravangian implies that Taravangian's champion is someone Rayse didn't think of. This is further supported by the lengths Rayse went to to recruit Dalinar and Kaladin as his champion, which would have been pointless if Rayse already had a champion lined up. Even if Dalinar was Plan A and Gavilar was a secret Plan B, it would make more sense to use Gavilar's return to try to turn Dalinar rather than hold him in reserve, especially since Gavilar's return would destroy Dalinar's relationship with Navani.

Ah, I see your reasoning. I don't see anything that says you have to trade the person in question "to the Sorceress." The quote I found says "bring the person he loved most to the Sorceress's home, to be cursed, in exchange for his freedom," which says the trade must occur by bringing her to the Sorceress's home, but doesn't specify who she's being traded to. The quote you found says "bring her to [the Sorceress's] home in trade for my freedom," which similarly specifies the location but not the recipient. From the wording, it sounds like the Sorceress assumed that the she would be the only one present at her home and able to curse someone and so neglected to specify that Tress would be given to her or cursed by her, but her assumption was proven incorrect when Hoid was at the Sorceress's home with the ability to make curses.

What other clause are you referring to? The bolded language is a paraphrase of the language I quoted, minus the "to be cursed" detail. What other requirement do you think there was? I agree that Hoid is not the most reliable narrator. However, as long as Charlie's curse didn't say "to be cursed by the Sorceress" or otherwise get into details about Tress's curse (which would have required additional changes by Hoid, since Tress obviously wasn't versed by the Sorceress), I don't see why taking her to be (nominally) cursed by Hoid would be insufficient.

Hoid's a lot snarkier and more cynical than Lewis, and generally has a much more noticeable voice. I did find it amusing that we now have a second fantasy story about people sailing into the unknown where one of the main characters is a talking mouse/rat in an otherwise-human crew.

Charlie's curse requires him to "bring the person he loved most to the Sorceress's home, to be cursed, in exchange for his freedom." Hoid got around this by tweaking the wording, but I think Charlie and Tress could have easily satisfied the condition as long as they did so before the Sorceress left and took her home with her.* Specifically, the curse said that Charlie needed to bring Tress to the Sorceress's home "to be cursed," but it doesn't say who would be doing the cursing. So Charlie and Tress could go out the door, then Charlie could lead her back inside to be cursed by Hoid in exchange for his freedom. Hoid could then give her a harmless, easy-to-break curse (e.g., your hair will be purple until you clap three times), or even not curse her at all, since all that matters is that Charlie brought her there "to be cursed" (the fact that "to be cursed" is offset by commas implies that his freedom would be given in exchange for him bring her there for that purpose, not in exchange for the curse itself). Is there a reason this wouldn't work, other than the characters not thinking of it until after the Sorceress left? *-Incidentally, even after the Sorceress left, the island itself might have counted as her "home" due to having been her home for centuries, similar to how people call Mt. Vernon "George Washington's home" even though he doesn't live there anymore due to being dead. If I'd been on the crew, I would have recommended at least trying that.

I'll be honest, I wasn't too surprised to learn that all Lightweavers get a new "persona" each time they reach a new level, but the revelation that Navani had been a persona of Shalash all along came as a bit of a surprise. At least now we know how she faked Gavilar's death.

What if Honor and Cultivation had ten children, but nine were "unmade" by Odium (becoming the nine Unmade) and only the Sibling survived? This would be consistent with what Sja-Anat says about unmaking (which implies that the Unmade were something else before Odium unmade them), with what Raboniel almost does to the Sibling, and with the general "Honor and Cultivation have ten but Odium only has nine" theme we're seeing.