Questions about Sezth back story

[Ogeas]

Hello, I have two questions that may have an answer already but I haven't found.

Is the splash thing we see in Sezth flashbacks in anyway related to the color culture in Nalthis?

Is there anything important in the fact that one of Sezth's punishments is to run 16 laps? (focus on the 16 of course).

 

Thank you!

[Returned he/him]

I don't think that the splashes are meaningfully related to Nalthis. It's not impossible that it's an incidental offshoot of some Nalthian influence but I doubt it means anything like Awakeners are present in Shinovar. I read it as being a cultural/political custom only, similar to the Citizen's approved colors for clothing in Hero of Ages.

As far as I know there is nothing especially important about Szeth being assigned to run sixteen laps. Sixteen is an important number in the Cosmere due to the number of Shards into which Adonalsium was split, and may have deeper import than that (we don't really know enough about the underlying Cosmere principles to confidently say either way). But sixteen was the number associated with Preservation, not any of the Shards on Roshar, so I doubt it carries the same significance there as it did on Scadrial.

The number of laps may or may not be related to anything in-world (like some remnant cultural memory of the Shattering), it may or may not be thematically related but without any in-world relevance (Sanderson is writing in connections for us to see but that don't matter for the books' characters), or it may be totally incidental. In time we might learn that it was significant for some reason, but I don't think there is much reason to suppose so right now. It's fun to theorycraft though-- if the sixteen laps were significant, what do you imagine the relevance might be?