Prediction For Stormlight 5 (Spoilers for RoW)

[Jace The Firesworn]

On 6/14/2023 at 4:46 AM, alder24 said:

No, I think this will happen, Death Rattles are talking about it. Stormfather will be deadeye, Highstorms stop working, only endless weeping with no Stormlight. This will cause flooding across Roshar and destroy Kharbrant, wounding Odium for breaking his word to Taravangian. I wrote about is somewhere.

Would you be willing to quote a Death rattle or a few? So I don't have to dig through the Coppermind

Edit:

Ahh found them

Quote

Above silence, the illuminating storms—dying storms—illuminate the silence above.

Quote

Light grows so distant. The storm never stops. I am broken, and all around me have died. I weep for the end of all things. He has won. Oh, he has beaten us. 

Quote

 

I'm cold. Mother, I'm cold. Mother? Why can I still hear the rain? Will it stop? 

Those are the one's I found. Something I would like to point out is that the visions (or whatever they are) CAN be wrong as proved in Oathbringer, by Renarin.

Edited June 24, 2023 by Jace The Firesworn

[The Stick]

My view on this is much the same as what a Shardcast said. I don't think Odium has to shield Kharbranth from a volcano for example. He basically had to promise to not murder the city, but he does not have to protect it.

[alder24]

7 hours ago, Jace The Firesworn said:

Would you be willing to quote a Death rattle or a few? So I don't have to dig through the Coppermind

Edit:

Ahh found them

Those are the one's I found. Something I would like to point out is that the visions (or whatever they are) CAN be wrong as proved in Oathbringer, by Renarin.

There are more of them. If you want to read my theory about it here it is: https://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/113735-loophole-in-the-contract/?do=findComment&comment=1419241

Future visions can be wrong, yes, but for now we have no Death Rattle that was proven to be wrong - even more, at least one was fulfilled at the end of RoW (Kal swearing the 4th Ideal).

7 hours ago, The Stick said:

My view on this is much the same as what a Shardcast said. I don't think Odium has to shield Kharbranth from a volcano for example. He basically had to promise to not murder the city, but he does not have to protect it.

He doesn't but if his actions led to destruction of Kharbranth, while he wasn't aiming for that, it should still count as a broken oath.

[ftl]

My guesses for SA5:

1. Kaladin and Dalinar get to their 5th ideals.  (Kaladin's the easy guess.)

2. Taravangian finds some way to loophole Dalinar into a worse-than-loss outcome in the contest of champions. Possibly involving Dalinar being unable to do what must be done to win the contest because of his honor. This is the mid-book failure for the heroes.

3. End of the book, Taravangian dies and Odium shard is either splintered or merged with Honor remnants.

4. Dalinar dies at the end too. After reforging Honor and doing something with it.

5. Szeth dies as well. He's not even going to be sad about it.

6. All of the planned flashback characters of the back 5 books survive.

7. The heralds are healed somehow. So are the deadeyes. (Possibly in the same event?)

I like the theory that sometime in this book the Stormfather is killed and Stormlight becomes a lot harder to get, but I can't decide whether I should guess that's part of the mid-book crisis, whether it's the end of the book and setup for the back 5 books, or whether it's a prophecy that almost comes true but then gets averted at the last moment.

[Leuthie]

I have a hard time believing that we'll be left with an infinite Weeping at the end of Book 5. A melancholy hiatus from the series is expected, but leaving Roshar in a state of death for the break doesn't seem like a Sanderson thing to do. It will more than likely be the state of the world during most of Book 5 and be fixed in the Sanderlanche. I'm guessing that Dalinar and Stormfather die early in the book.

I'm also guessing that Cultivation will be positioned as both a savior of the front 5 and an antagonist for the back 5.

[The Stick]

I don't think Taravangian is dying because after all the trouble and foreshadowing he went through so far,  bringing him on a single book antagonist is complete wasted potential. Maybe Shallan freeing BAM will heal the cognitive entities?

[alder24]

2 hours ago, Leuthie said:

I have a hard time believing that we'll be left with an infinite Weeping at the end of Book 5. A melancholy hiatus from the series is expected, but leaving Roshar in a state of death for the break doesn't seem like a Sanderson thing to do. It will more than likely be the state of the world during most of Book 5 and be fixed in the Sanderlanche. I'm guessing that Dalinar and Stormfather die early in the book.

I agree. Weeping will happen after part 1 (contest of champions) and the rest of the book will be about dealing with consequences of it (dead Stormfather, no light, no Highstorms etc). But at the end of the book, Stromfather will get healed either by releasing BAM, or by restoring and Ascending to Honor. 

[morcey2]

I have a little different theory for 5.  I have thought about it quite a bit, but have had to focus on other things lately.  But most of this particular theory is from a dream I had the other night.  So it has to be good. 

 

Spoiler

Todium is defeated, but not by Dalinar or anyone else from Roshar.  He's defeated by either Autonomy, who sees the new vessel as weak, or some other entity like a rogue Primal Aether, who takes up the shard of Odium and possibly a reassembled Honor.  I don't even know if a "rogue" primal aether could be a thing but, hey, it was my dream, not yours. 

This would result in a more peaceful Roshar for the short term but everyone knows it's going to be much, much worse in the medium/long term. 

(end of dream stuff but start of thinking.)

Dalinar becomes a slave to the new entity (having lost the battle of champions) but is changed to something similar to a Fused, but different enough to give him more, um, Autonomy.  Lift, Rlain, Shallan, and The Lopen are the protagonists for the upcoming books with Shallan playing the largest role.  Kaladin becomes a worldhopper and helps Hoid until they have a falling out and then he does the Vasher/Zahel thing and finds a nice planet to reside on and dispenses wisdom, surgical skills, and stabby training.  Kal becoming a world hopper implies that Syl is either killed a-la Phendorana, or that something happens with the release of BAM or the recreation of Honor.  (My other theory is that Kaladin ascends to a recreated Honor immediately after Syl's death.)

I also think that Szeth breaks when he's in Shinovar and he ends up completely aligning with Nale.  And wreaking havoc w/ NB until Vasher intervenes and is able to get NB from Szeth and into the CR. 

And then at the end of the dream, Kaladin was finally able to become a Broadway Producer like he had dreamed his whole life.  His first play was "The Cremling Follies."

I don't know if any of that makes sense.  I've only listened to the books (but I have listened to all of them, at least once) so I may have missed something in the translation to audio like when shards names are used and capitalized for extra meaning in a sentence. 

Matt

[alder24]

26 minutes ago, morcey2 said:

I have a little different theory for 5.  I have thought about it quite a bit, but have had to focus on other things lately.  But most of this particular theory is from a dream I had the other night.  So it has to be good. 

Dreams about Brandon's books are the best!  

27 minutes ago, morcey2 said:

Todium is defeated, but not by Dalinar or anyone else from Roshar.  He's defeated by either Autonomy, who sees the new vessel as weak, or some other entity like a rogue Primal Aether, who takes up the shard of Odium and possibly a reassembled Honor.  I don't even know if a "rogue" primal aether could be a thing but, hey, it was my dream, not yours. 

Autonomy - maybe. A Primal Aether for sure not - several Aethers combined are still weaker than a single Shard, one is far beneath it. An Aether would have little to none chances to defeat a Shard alone.

Spoiler

Questioner

Obviously the Shards are the top dogs in terms of power and stuff, but Hoid seems to be his own level of dangerous. Are there any other characters as sort of rivals to his ambition or power?

Brandon Sanderson

Depends on how you want to express it. Some of the dragons from Yolen are as old and are very crafty. You could argue that the aethers, the actual core aethers, are as ancient and potentially powerful. I wouldn't put them by raw power at Shard level, but they would claim that they are. Depends on what you would think there. There are some other individuals of a similar, not as dangerous as Hoid, but on a similar level. Been around for thousands of years, investigated a lot of the magics, and these sorts of things.

Dragonsteel Mini-Con 2021 (Nov. 22, 2021)

 

What do you mean by "rogue" Primar Aether? An Aether who goes alone, against wishes/will of other Aethers? There can be Aether like that, why not? Every Aether is independent, capable of making decisions on their own. One can rebel against united effords of others.

 

35 minutes ago, morcey2 said:

I also think that Szeth breaks when he's in Shinovar and he ends up completely aligning with Nale.  And wreaking havoc w/ NB until Vasher intervenes and is able to get NB from Szeth and into the CR. 

I don't think that would ever happen. Szeth swears to obey Dalinar's orders, not Nale's, he already decided whom to follow and doesn't struggle with that. However what will happen to Szeth if Dalinar gets turned into Fused and starts serving Odium? Will Szeth's 4th Ideal overwrite his 3rd one and allow him to act independently, or will he go back serving Taravangian, which is his worst nightmare (and Roshar's too). You gave me a very scary scenario to think about.

[morcey2]

41 minutes ago, alder24 said:

Dreams about Brandon's books are the best!  

Beats the heck out of the dreams about matrices, Gauss elimination, and L/U decomp that I've been having for the last week.  Glad I'm only taking one class this summer.  30 years ago I probably wouldn't have struggled with it, but my brain's old now. 
 

45 minutes ago, alder24 said:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Questioner

Obviously the Shards are the top dogs in terms of power and stuff, but Hoid seems to be his own level of dangerous. Are there any other characters as sort of rivals to his ambition or power?

Brandon Sanderson

Depends on how you want to express it. Some of the dragons from Yolen are as old and are very crafty. You could argue that the aethers, the actual core aethers, are as ancient and potentially powerful. I wouldn't put them by raw power at Shard level, but they would claim that they are. Depends on what you would think there. There are some other individuals of a similar, not as dangerous as Hoid, but on a similar level. Been around for thousands of years, investigated a lot of the magics, and these sorts of things.

Dragonsteel Mini-Con 2021 (Nov. 22, 2021)

 

What do you mean by "rogue" Primar Aether? An Aether who goes alone, against wishes/will of other Aethers? There can be Aether like that, why not? Every Aether is independent, capable of making decisions on their own. One can rebel against united effords of others.

Part of that is from the dream (the "rogue" part).  Part of it is from just thinking about questions like what powers/personalities that are out in the cosmere haven't really been explored and would make things really interesting (terrifying/terminal/functionally-weird) if they took up a shard?  The "Autonomy doing something to Odium" piece of the theory has been brought up before, I think. I don't think that's really their style, though.  They seem to be playing more of a long-game.  I'm kinda new at this and I really should be taking notes while I'm listening to the books, but most of it happens while I'm driving. 

 

50 minutes ago, alder24 said:

I don't think that would ever happen. Szeth swears to obey Dalinar's orders, not Nale's, he already decided whom to follow and doesn't struggle with that. However what will happen to Szeth if Dalinar gets turned into Fused and starts serving Odium? Will Szeth's 4th Ideal overwrite his 3rd one and allow him to act independently, or will he go back serving Taravangian, which is his worst nightmare (and Roshar's too). You gave me a very scary scenario to think about.

Yeah, that would be kinda scary.  Dalinar gets turned into a fused. Szeth obeys fused Dalinar because of his oath.  Dalinar is being controlled by TOdium.   If that happens, though, SF would probably be at least severely weakened because of the broken bond unless Dalinar stayed bonded.  Again, releasing BAM could come into play with lots of this relating to both the spren and fused.  And I have no idea what Cultivation is up to enabling Todium to be a thing.  That's a bit of a wildcard, also. 

Also, the way that Odium was defeated in my dream involved Tasers and cattle prods, so I think those should be worked into the second half of SA books somehow.  They'll probably have harnessed electricity at that point on Roshar.  I don't know if chull-prods would be a thing with their carapace. 

[alder24]

11 hours ago, morcey2 said:

Also, the way that Odium was defeated in my dream involved Tasers and cattle prods, so I think those should be worked into the second half of SA books somehow.  They'll probably have harnessed electricity at that point on Roshar.  I don't know if chull-prods would be a thing with their carapace. 

Electricity on Roshar? Not likely. Roshar is going a different path, magic-tech path. They have Stormlight and fabrials instead of electricity. Mistborn spoilers WoB:

Spoiler

Chaos

How much do you plan in the cosmere? There were a few things in Rhythm of War [that went in] a different direction, like anti-Investiture, that black sphere Gavilar had in the prologue being anti-Investiture, and Testament and Shallan, were those always part of the plan or options?

Brandon Sanderson

Those were always options. Anti-Investiture has been pretty core for a long time, there are a couple reasons for this. Number one I need to get certain resources into the cosmere for use in the future, and anti-Investiture is one of those. Another reason is I want to push Stormlight Archive more towards magic-tech, because I'm pushing Mistborn more towards Earth analog with Earth technology and then some cool fantastical things thrown in, but when you're using the technology. When you're using a radio on Scadrial, it's a radio. You know what a radio is. It works based on radio principles, and maybe you can do some wacky things with weight, but an airship is kind of an airship to them where as I want Roshar which is on the opposite end of that spectrum. Where an airship on Roshar is not an airship like you would imagine. Its not being propelled in normal ways it's working off all these weird magical things. And anti-Investiture was an important thing to get into the series for the future for that reason.

[...]

Shardcast Interview (Jan. 23, 2021)

 

Edited July 4, 2023 by alder24