LuckyJim

It's possible but we don't actually know what, if anything, a herald would pass down to their offspring. It could just as easily be the result of her exposure to whatever the Unmade influence over the Davar household is.

I wouldn't look to closely into it, it's more likely they're just similar names. I mean if this really is that Senna she'd already be pretty well traveled and at least somewhat familiar with Hoid, so why would she be so shocked that Hoid would ask her to prepare treatises on the different orders of Knights Radiant? It really seems like she's just an ordinary person on Roshar who became an apprentice Worldsinger.

The vibe I got from Sigzil's narration was that at some point while acting as the leader of the Windrunners, he has a massive failure that he can't emotionally recover from. When you consider that the fourth ideal (which he will eventually hit) is "I will accept there will be those I cannot protect", a pretty clear picture starts to form. He broke under the stress of that failure, probably because he got a lot of people killed, and broke his bond as a result of it. It may have even been intentional, as he felt he wasn't worthy of being a Windrunner anymore. A more interesting question to me is why did he become a Skybreaker? He doesn't seem to have any interest in justice, even in the moments where he starts to act on his oaths and recover his armor, it seems more like he's acting on his Windrunner oaths of protection. I guess he only bonded Aux out of convenience, since it seems like they met through a chance encounter (and from a meta perspective, this lets him keep the surge of Gravitation) but it's interesting to me that despite reaching the fourth ideal as a Skybreaker and supposedly changing a lot in the years between SA and now, he still feels more like a Windrunner. That being said there is a bit on the Skybreaker blurb on Brandon's website that seems relevant. It seems pretty relevant, since it seems like he bonded Aux to help keep the Dawnshard safe.

The information about the shards comes from chapter 68: One Family. Also, it does appear that the listeners had only eight sets of shards on the Shattered Plains. So there were eight sets of Shards, and ownership of them was determined by whichever family held one of the ten cities that they were associated with. There doesn't seem to be information about how they came to be there there, so either they found them, or perhaps the Last Legion obtained them at some point and brought them there.

I guess whatever's going on with Venli and the listeners, because they're the only ones I have zero idea of what they're actually going to be doing in book 5, it's hard to tell how much they're even going to be involved in the story since their whole deal is leaving the central conflict of the series. I just really wanna see more of the singers in general, we got plenty of insight on the Fused in book 4 but I feel like there's still a lot left unexplored on the various singer perspectives within the story.

Brandon has talked about that in one of the updates he posted to reddit. (spoiler tagged for book 5 just in case, but it's only information about the general formatting. There are no major plot details in the tag.)

I'd love it if we got an Interlude from a Skybreaker character, they currently act kinda like a hive mind so it would be interesting to see some individual perspectives within that group and what their personal feelings on their current situation and what they think about the whole conflict. Similarly, it would be great to explore the perspectives of the freed parsh, or perhaps even a Regal character. We've seen some of the Fused, but this part of Odium's forces is still pretty unexplored.

This is actually explained in the flashbacks, they found them in the 10 cities that were later occupied by the Alethi when they formed their warcamps. There was either a complete set in each of the ten cities, or only eight full sets. I can't remember the full details.

A lot of it has to do with betraying Bridge 4, he feels like he’s an inherently bad person who screws up anything good in his life. It’s made worse by the internalized prejudice he’s developed from living in a society that hates him for being “too big and too confident” for a darkeyes. Its made even worse when he sees that even in a Fused slave camp, the human prisoners have not only put the lighteyes in a favored position, they put a famously corrupt man in a position of leadership. All together it makes him conclude that not only is he an inherently bad person, perhaps all of humanity is the same. There’s no point in trying to make things better because humans always try to exploit and be cruel to each other. Admitting he’s sorry would mean admitting he was wrong, that everything he’s done and everything he’s been trying to prove was for nothing, and he’s desperately trying not to do that and rationalize his decisions. Dalinar had a similar moment after he finds out he burned Evi to death and tries to shift the blame onto her rather than admit he was at fault.

Seconding this, Moash spends basically all of RoW lying to himself. Trying to convince himself that he's happy with his choices and that he doesn't have any lingering regrets, which is so obviously wrong that even Rayse calls him out on it (mostly unchained, lol). I don't think he's going to suddenly have perfect clarity on his mental state when he's reeling from a recent defeat and all of the shame, guilt and self hatred he's been pushing away for the past year is coming crashing down on him. Like he can't bring himself to admit that he was wrong, that he's sorry, because doing so would cause him to just completely fall apart on the spot and he's barely holding himself together as is.

Could it happen? Absolutely, Moash is a fictional character after all. He'll be whatever he's written to be. Should it happen? I would argue yes, I think it opens up a lot of interesting story telling opportunities, chances to explore the themes of the series and play with viewpoints on the world and the evolving dynamics as things continue to change. Will it happen? I highly doubt it. It kind of feels like Brandon has always written Moash to be a jerk, even back in WoK when he was Kaladin's buddy. I don't expect him to move the character beyond audience hate sink.

Moash and Venli are characters I have kind of complicated feelings on, but they are the ones I think about the most and the ones I'm most anticipating seeing more of in the next books, so I suppose they'd be my favorites. Adolin too, in a much more straightforward and uncomplicated way. I just really like his vibe, I sort of picked him as my favorite basically as soon as he was introduced and I've stuck by that ever since.

I'm more wondering if it could potentially be weaponized. Like if you could use a shardbead as a sort of spiritual poison.

I think the important thing is that the shard weapon enters the body. Yes, that's basically what "piercing skin" means, but my though here is that it has to do with Perception. Essentially, the physical body acts as a sort of barrier containing the spiritual body, because most people imagine the soul being contained in the body. Therefore, if a shardweapon is going to have any effect on the spiritual body, it has to go through the physical first. As for what would happen... maybe its sort of deadening that spreads outward from the point of impact. Like rather than a spiritual limb being severed, it gets crushed. Also, here's an interesting idea. What if you could get someone to swallow a shard that had been summoned as a small bead?

1 I don't think this would be that big a deal. For one, a healthy population would have enough that some singers could quit their jobs to have children and those positions would be filled by other singers in the meantime. Also, considering all singers are untrained in any complex tasks, it's not like they have any specialists that they'd need to keep on hand at all times in the first place. 2 Why would they be forcing them? It doesn't seem like a leap to assume that there would be plenty of singers perfectly willing to have children.

They can change forms any time a highstorm comes, so its pretty simple for a section of them to just take mateform.

I've never really been able to hate Moash. In Oathbringer I thought he was one of the most interesting characters in the series, a character who's desire for revenge and very justified anger at a system that killed his grandparents lead him down a more morally complicated path than the other protagonists. I also really liked that he seemed to be forming a sort of group with the singers that he taught how to fight before the siege, almost like a parallel to Bridge 4, which was really neat as a sort of solidarity between humans and singers who both found themselves on the bottom of their respective social ladders, and I was really excited to see where that went. Then Rhythm of War happened... At this point, I can't even hate Moash, I'm more just disappointed at the fact that his arc went down this direction. I'm not saying it doesn't make sense for his character, or even that it was a bad choice for the story Sanderson wanted to tell, but it did make me lose a lot of interest in him as a character. That might change depending on how book 5 goes, but I don't really think Sanderson has any plans for him beyond audience hate sink.

Dabbid, obviously. Maybe he could bond Notum. Also I'd be okay with Adolin bonding Maya and becoming an Edgedancer, though I figure he's kind of far enough along that he doesn't really qualify for this list. I'd be on board for this too.

At that point it was a bunch of warlords competing with each other. They didn't have an actual central government until Gavilar went on his unification war.

In addition to what others have said, tying the surgebinding abilities of the Heralds to their Honorblades isn't that much of a handicap. It's not like the Heralds are going to be losing them or having them stolen, the Blades are bonded to their very soul and can be summoned and dismissed instantly. As far as we know, the Fused don't have any means of separating the Heralds from their Blades and their powers, so for all intents and purposes, tying the ability to use surges to a Blade doesn't have that many disadvantages.

I assume Jezrien hadn't given his up yet, he was waiting for Kalak first before he was going to plant his in the circle with the others.

I think it's unlikely. The Fused were elevated at the start of the Desolations and no other singers were elevated since, so we know she was with Odium at the start. There have been WoBs to suggest singers fought on the side of Honor in past Desolations, but I don't think there were any Fused switching sides at the time.

Kaladin going yellow eyes mode.

The ones that attacked Moash and Graves were Leshwi and the shanay-im who fly with her. This is how she and Moash meet when he killed her. I think the shanay-im all paired up with Graves and the other Diagram members and saw that as a fair duel. None of them interfere with Moash's fight with Leshwi and let him live after he kills her.

I'd argue Willshapers are externally focused, since you're helping other people by freeing those in bondage. The focus on building society and infrastructure could also be considered externally building things up, while Elsecallers are focused on internal building, but seeking their own potential.