Kranse

The FAQ unambiguously claims that it is impossible to bring things from a lower dimension to a higher one: "not even electrons or photons can make the trip." But that led me to wonder: What happens to someone who gains 20 pounds before returning home? What happens to someone who enters as a child and returns as an adult? What happens to someone who survived a traumatic event that resulted in a lot of blood & nanite loss? What happens to all of the water and oxygen in a person's body? Do all of these people have their non-native atoms spontaneously ripped from their body when they go through the portal? That sounds pretty dangerous, and something that would have been addressed if it were a problem. So we have to assume that it doesn't happen - the rule has a loophole that ensures a person will make the journey upstream intact, even if their body contains foreign atoms. The implications raise more questions, like could someone bring a disease with them? What about a parasite? I think this is why Logna was so keen about keeping John alive, she wants to use this loophole to travel upstream herself. Maybe she can find a way to hitch a ride with him. Or maybe, if he fathers a child, that child wouldn't be poisonous to Logna but might have enough "substance" to travel upstream (seems like a stretch, but something worth considering).

Was anyone else expecting Harmony to offer Wayne reincarnation / immortality as a kandra? Wayne's death felt pretty heavily foreshadowed, so I was not surprised when it happened. But I was anticipating Harmony would say something like "Since you died while heavily invested and in the presence of a large quantity of Harmonium, I can offer you the same choice Rashek offered to the first kandra. You are already more talented than many who have had centuries of practice, and I believe MeLaan could use a partner on her mission. Will you join my faceless immortals?" It certainly would have been interesting; I can only imagine the shenanigans Wayne would get up to with a kandra's abilities. And giving Harmony the ability to create new kandra, if only in very unique circumstances, would address the concern that they are going extinct.

Do you think that means he can't die in the meantime? Plot armor only works when death is permanent.

Thinking about it more, I suspect Hoid will be the one that meets a tragic end. He's been taking a much more active role in events lately, sooner or later he's going to stick his neck out too far. I can definitely imagine him getting killed at some crucial moment, then showing up in the epilogue all like "See Kelsier, you're not the only one who knows how to make a dramatic exit!" Plus it will make just about everyone confused or angry when he shows up in SA6, which is his favorite activity.

So he's trying to replicate what the Fused do when they take over a Singer body? That makes his experiments even more heinous, killing two people per attempt.

Maybe he does some trickery with an unsealed metalmind to store their bond while he's away. Or something tragic happens to her in SA5...

Is there any indication that Hoid has been to another world since bonding Design? If he has, maybe he leaves her behind in Shadesmar.

I don't think my theory is inconsistent with a protracted death. Clearly Odium had been striking at Honor for a long time leading up to this point, damaging his sanity and hurting him in ways that we can't fully comprehend. I think that if Honor were in his right mind, he never would have allowed Melishi to imprison BAM. This sequence of events was simply the deathblow, like the moment when an elk falters and the wolves are able to strike at the jugular.

I don't know if physical distance would matter for something like this, I imagine Odium and Honor being locked in conflict in the spiritual realm (like what we see in Mistborn). But when Honor betrays the Fused, Odium is able to use them as a weapon against him, sort of like a shardblade that can be summoned to the spiritual realm. It would also explain why Odium switched sides and created the fused in the first place. Once Honor made a promise to them, Odium wanted to keep them around until they could be weaponized.

I like this theory, it also might help explain why the imprisoning of Bo-Ado-Mishram and the Recreance resulted in deadeyes. The Singers, with their oral traditions, were sustaining the spren in some fundamental way. The Nahel bond to humans provides something more, but when that bond breaks they don't have the Singer-provided Identity to fall back on. It could also suggest that Kelek is wrong, and that releasing BAM will not necessarily fix the problem, unless releasing her somehow restores Singer culture and their bond to Roshar's spren.

Honor's death has been a great unanswered question since TWoK, but after RoW, I think we can make some educated guesses about what happened. The biggest clue comes from Rayse's negotiations with Dalinar, where he reveals that breaking his agreement with Dalinar would leave him fatally exposed. This could all be exposition, revealing to us readers some fundamental rules about the nature of shards. Maybe a bit of misdirection too; just as we start hypothesizing about how Odium could be defeated through a broken oath, he gets stabbed in the face. But it seems like bad storytelling to show us a Chekhov's gun that can kill a shard and never pull the trigger. Unless, of course, the gun has already been fired. And it seems poetic for the god of oaths to be undone by a broken promise. Theory: Honor was able to be killed because he broke an agreement/oath The obvious follow-up questions are "what is the agreement?" and "who did he make it with?" One possible answer is that he made some kind of deal with Odium. This seems plausible - Odium is bound to Roshar by something Honor did, and I don't think he could have done so unconditionally without Odium's compliance. But if Odium agreed to be bound under some conditions, and Honor violated those conditions, it feels like Odium would have been able to free himself rather than simply kill Honor's vessel. Additionally, I don't think Tanavast would be dumb enough to make an agreement with Rayse and then violate it in such a way as to put himself at Rayse's mercy. And if that did happen, there's no way Rayse would take partial credit; he would not exclaim "We killed you!" as he did in Oathbringer. Instead, I think Honor broke an agreement he made with the Singers and/or the Fused. Once that happened, Tanavast exposed himself to the Fused, and Odium somehow empowered them to deal the killing blow. This would mean that the Fused named Rine, who also says "We killed [Honor]," was not speaking metaphorically or in a vague collective sense, but literally. I have some evidence to support this theory, and piece together approximately what promise was broken. The first has to do with Windrunners and Honorspren - it does not seem like a coincidence that the Windrunner oaths are all about protection. "The choice of Honor is life" and all that. From the Eila Steele, we know that after humanity destroyed Ashyn, Tanavast commanded the Singers to accept the human refugees. The steele suggests that the Singers did so out of pity and compassion, but it seems obvious that many would have objections. I think the leaders among the Singers (who would eventually become the Fused), demanded that Honor make an oath along the lines of "I will protect you from them" or more specifically "I will not allow the humans to destroy you with surgebinding" before they agreed. Consider how the timing lines up. Prior to his death, Honor apparently was going insane and no longer considering the meaning behind oaths, just the oaths themselves. In this state of mind, he might not consider the capturing of BAM and subsequent lobotomizing of the Singer race as "destroying" them. But it's obvious to the rest of us that such an atrocity is equivalent to genocide. When the Fused learned what happened, they would seek vengeance against the shard that allowed it to happen. Also, this theory helps explain another question I've had: Humanity "won" every desolation, but apparently never tried to exterminate the Singers after the Heralds sealed away the Fused and Regals. Genocide is bad, but towards the end the desolations occurred so frequently that people were living through several of them over the span of their lives. Surely there would have been powerful factions willing to do whatever was necessary to end the desolations once and for all. Unless, of course, Honor himself forbade it. TLDR: I think Honor promised to protect the Singers, and the Fused perceived the imprisoning of BAM as a violation of that promise, allowing them to kill him

In espionage, a "sleeper" agent is just someone who has successfully infiltrated the target country, but is not actively doing anything (gathering intelligence, performing operations, etc). I suspect Taravangian's sleepers are just regular men & women who are loyal to the Diagram or Kharbranth.

I agree with the idea that Hoid's meeting with Odium was meant to distract his attention away from something else that was happening, and I have a theory about what it is. In Oathbringer, Jasnah is practically chomping at the bit to explore Dalinar's visions. However, she has to stop after Odium becomes aware of them - the participants are apparently vulnerable within the visions and they aren't able to keep Odium out. She probably laments this situation to Wit at some point off-screen, and he proposes to distract Rayse long enough for her to find out discover what she's looking for. Which vision would be worth going to all this trouble over? Well, consider how badly both Jasnah and Dalinar want to interrogate the Heralds. They've kept Taln and Ash as prisoners honored guests for the past year, repeatedly interviewing them despite Ash's insistence that they have nothing more to offer. Dalinar risked much to meet with Ishar, despite his insanity. Now consider that there is a vision containing a Herald who is not insane, and possibly more than that. From Oathbringer Chapter 42 (Consequences): From the Prelude, we know that Kalak was the last to arrive; Jezrien's speech probably occurs right after their conversation. If Jasnah and Dalinar rush to the meeting place instead of participating in the battle, they could probably catch the two if them. Depending on how long the vision is, they might even catch the rest of the Heralds before they depart. This could present an opportunity to ask them important questions about the Oathpact. Now, this theory does have a problem - the Stormfather explicitly told Dalinar that attempts to extract more information than what Honor intended to convey would reveal how flimsy the visions are. But both Dalinar and Jasnah seem desperate enough for information that they might attempt a plan like this. Another problem - the highstorm has already come and gone by the time of Hoid's meeting. Dalinar is able to enter & pull other people into the visions while the highstorm is elsewhere over Roshar, but it's not clear if he can do so once the storm has passed beyond Shinovar/Aimia.