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Why does Todium have to go through with the contest of champions? It was explained away in a sentence at end of RoW, but Todium is not Rayse at all. Why not just admit to Dalinar that he killed Rayse and took up the Shard of Odium? He's not the same person as Rayse and shouldn't be bound by Rayse's oath (at least how I see it).

Another one of my random ideas occurred to me recently. Everyone is focusing on how the contest of champions and the agreement relating to it is going to decide the future of Roshar. I agree that it is almost certainly going to be the deciding event in book 5, but there will obviously be a lot more going on than just that. So I've been wondering what else might happen that could cause conflict between the various groups on Roshar, and I think I found a good one. In order to find out as much as possible to be able to fulfill his plan to make a deal with Odium, Tarravangian abducted people from his hospitals and slowly killed them, with people he trusted standing by to record any death rattles that the dying might speak. As far as we know, the only people to know about this are the members of the Diagram and Szeth. Tarravangian revealed that he had sent Szeth to kill Dalinar, but as far as I know, the King of Karbranth never revealed that he was using people like this. So what would happen if this information were to be revealed to the people of Karbranth. As of right now, Karbranth is neutral in the conflict between the forces of Honor and Odium. Odium is supposedly bound by his promise, to Tarravangian ironically, not to touch Karbranth, and Dalinar is currently uninterested in attacking them due to their insignificance. But what would happen if the city were to go into a rebellion, upon learning that their former ruler, the father of their current queen, was abducting citizens and killing them for his own twisted reasons? If that somehow got out, I can only assume because of Szeth, and there was any kind of evidence to support it, it's not hard to imagine the city being spurred to revolt. Now of course, there are a couple of issues with this theory. First of all, since the two people who made the deal to protect Karbranth are now essentially the same person, is that deal even binding? I brought up that very point with someone who had a different idea (and arguably an even better one) about how to turn the Karbranth protection deal against Odium. I don't think we know enough to really answer that question, so we'll have to wait and see. The second issue is how exactly this would get out and why hasn't it before? Well, as I said, Szeth is the only one outside of the Diagram organization who knows about what they were doing to hear the death rattles, and as we learned with the anti voidlight sphere, he's not always the most forthcoming with information except when directly asked. And if a conversation regarding Tarravangian's other actions, such as him having Szeth kill monarchs across Roshar, were to occur, it's not unreasonable to assume that something regarding the death rattles were to pop up. The next problem is how would anyone get proof (if any is left), and the only way that I can think of is for someone to infiltrate Karbranth, which I think could make for a a good mission for some characters, maybe some of Shallan's agent LightWeavers, to go on. The biggest problem with this theory is that until someone figures out Tarravangian is Odium, there's not really a good reason to stir up trouble in Karbranth. If and when it gets out, having Karbranth on the verge of collapse, disrupting the very thing Tarravangian worked to hard to prevent, would be a fantastic way to expose his corruption and cause a huge distraction for the newest Shard. Not to mention it would be a great twist, doing to Tarravangian the exact same thing he did to Dalinar in OathBringer. But as it stands right now, the only person not under Odium's command that is likely to find out about Todium is Hoid. And while he might very well decide to cause such a rebellion as a way to help indirectly, he'd have to find out about Todium quickly enough and make it to Karbranth in time to expose things. I'm trying to think of other reasons good enough for the Radiants, or even another group like the GhostBloods or even the Listerners, to stir things up in Karbranth. So far, I haven't come up with anything.

As we know Szeth and the rest of our heroes have no clue that Taravangian lives and is more powerful than ever. Nightblood is not very reliable. He forgot trying to eat Szeth and Lift in OB 5 seconds after it happened. If they are going to figure it out how will they do it? Szeth does have a Spren, who (conveniently) never talks to him, but surely must have been somewhere close by when all this went down. Even if the Spren was not right next to Szeth at first some part of the sequence of events would have interested it. 1) Szeth is in a(nother) crazy rage. 2) Taravangian broke the gemstones releasing corrupted Spren. 3) Rayse appears to Taravangian yelling at him as they transition to the golden room. I assume Szeth and his Spren will be on speaking terms in SA5. It’s possible the Spren felt Odium paying close attention. In WoR right before Seth's first attempt on Dalinar, Syl freaks out saying “The One Who Hates” is watching. In RoW Sja Anat senses Odium coming before he shows up in her interlude. Maybe this what will help Szeth et al piece together what really happened. Again, Nightblood not a great witness:

Cultivation doesn't have a goal or an endgame. She wants to guide everyone and everything to be the best version of themselves. What does "best" mean here? Whatever the subject thinks it does. The alethi (as a group) think the best version of themselves have to be the best warriors. Taravangian thinks his best version is to have the capacity to stop what is coming. His stated goal is not to stop it....just to have the capacity to do so. Seems to me that the vessel of Odium has the capacity to stop what odium is doing. He's new, and the shardic intent won't begin to consume him for centuries, maybe millenia. And yet. Will he stop it? Taravangian's arc is over. Taravangian got what he wanted. TOdium's arc has just begun and we have no idea what He will do next.

Hi, It's my first post, I specifically created an account so I could talk about it. During the RoW epilogue, a detail struck me as weird. After Hoid got his memory Breaths modified by TOdium, the dialogue seems more neat the second time. When we repeat a speech, we tend to add words, to emphasize our meaning. It feels to me like Wit knew what was happening. He just couldn't resist improving his speech the second time. I know it's a long stretch but please debate