oathbringer [OB] Oathbringer curiosities

[galendo]

When I was reading through Oathbringer, I made notes about some of the weird stuff that was mentioned.  Stuff that's probably foreshadowing.  Stuff that might be foreshadowing.  Stuff that just seems a bit weird.  Mysterious singing, ethereal smoky shapes...you get the idea.  All page references refer to the hardcover page number.

Anyway, here's my list of some weird things that were mentioned and what (if anything) I think they mean.  Very often I don't have a clue, or at least not a good one.  If I'd a clear explanation, it probably wouldn't have qualified as a curiosity in the first place!

The following are roughly in the order that they appear throughout the book.  Without further ado:

1) When talking to Kaladin about his family, Syl mentions a mysterious voice:

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pg. 77:

“Remember them?” Kaladin whispered.  “Syl, you never knew me when I lived here.”

“That’s true,” she said.

“So how can you remember them?” Kaladin said, frowning.

“Because I do,” Syl said, flitting around him.  “Everyone is connected, Kaladin.  Everything is connected.  I didn’t know you then, but the winds did, and I am of the winds.”

...

She landed in the air before him and beame a young woman.  “Besides, there was...another voice.  Pure, with a song like tapped crystal, distant yet demanding...”  She smiled, and zipped away.

Is this a reference to Tien?  They're talking about his family, so it seems plausible, but I'm not sure why she'd mention it if so.  Reminding Kaladin of things that depress him isn't something she generally does.  But I don't know what other voice she'd be referring to.  It's also another mention of music ("a song like tapped crystal, distant yet demanding"), which might mean nothing but which, as I note below, seems to play a pretty big background role in the Stormlight Archive.

2) Urithiru is weird:

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pg. 96: The corridors often twisted about in strange curves, rarely running straight toward an intersection.  Dalinar suggested that perhaps this was to fool invaders, like a castle fortification.  The sweeping turns and lack of seams made the corridors feel like tunnels.

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pg 522: —tests confirm something is different here.  Temperatures are distinctly lower on other nearby peaks of the same elevation—

I think we can agree that Urithiru probably wasn't built along strange, twisted curves in order to fool invaders.  It doesn't seem like the sort of place that would be attacked by anyone ever.  How would you get your army there?  It's not like Odium's forces could have used the Oathgates, and they don't have all that many Fused who can fly.  There's also a line earlier about how there's more air circulating than there should be, though I didn't copy that one down because at the time I chalked it up to clever engineering.  The second of the two quotes above indicate that more is going on than meets the eye, though -- no amount of clever engineering would make temperatures higher at Urithiru than on other similar peaks.

The weird thing, though, is that this all seems to be happening without Stormlight.  Urithiru's been uninhabited for ages, and it's too high up for most highstorms.  If it were ancient fabrial tech...that still takes Stormlight, right?  Soulcasting does, at least.  So how is the place staying warm?  Something weird is going on.

3) Dalinar sees a strange shadow-world:

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pg. 350: All went dark around Dalinar, and he entered a place between his world and the visions.  A place with a black sky and an infinite floor of bone-white rock.  Shapes made of smoke seeped through the stone ground, then rose around him, dissipating. Common things.  A chair, a vase, a rockbud.  Sometimes people.

Later on the Stormfather claims that he made this in-between place, but the description sounds familiar to me.  I can't place it, but I feel like we've seen this place somewhere before.  Why would the Stormfather bother to create an in-between world, anyway?

4) Something is different about the Fused's lashings:

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pg. 459: His arms ached from being carried.  Why hadn’t they used their powers to Lash him upward and make him lighter, as Kaladin would have?

So why didn't the Fused lash Moash?  They can clearly lash people, since Moash himself got lashed upwards during the fight in the same scene and Kaladin later got lashed sideways.  Seems strange that they'd choose to carry him rather than lash him.

It's not like they're worried about running out of power, either.  Later on, we see that the flying Fused use their lashings pretty profligately.  I don't have a quote, but there's a scene where one of the Fused hovers while reading a book, apparently just because he/she can.  Also, the Fused in Shadesmar are flying about willy-nilly despite Investiture apparently being more difficult to get there.  In fact, I don't think we've ever seen a Fused run out of juice.  Something's clearly different here.

5) Lopen looks under rocks for some strange reason:

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pg 542: They all seemed to find this comforting.  Well, except Lopen, who had snuck away from the group and for some reason was lifting up rocks on the other side of the plateau and looking underneath them.  Even among humans, he was a strange one.

Now this could just be an instance of Lopen being weird, but it's hand-waved off a little too blithely for that to be the case.  Lopen might be different, but he's not the sort of different that does things for no reason.  Maybe he's supposed to be humoring his spren?  Syl might want to look under rocks just to see what's beneath them, so that could be it.  The scene in question is a pretty touching Bridge Four moment.  It seems strange to call out Lopen for behaving bizarrely unless there's some ulterior motive behind it.  He's never done anything that seemingly nonsensical before.

6) Odium and his spren appear Shin:

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pg 547: He seemed to be Shin, judging by his skin and eyes, and he wore a golden crown in his powdery hair.

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pg 238: The spren beside him was glowing yellow, not blue-white.  The tiny woman stood on a translucent pillar of golden stone that had risen from the ground to put her even with Kaladin’s gaze.  It, like the spren herself, was the yellow-white color of the center of a flame.

She wore a flowing dress that covered her legs entirely.  Hands behind her back, she inspected him.  Her face was shaped oddly—narrow, but with large, childlike eyes.  Like someone from Shinovar.

Now supposedly Odium came to Roshar along with the humans, so it's not terribly surprising if he and his look like those original humans.  But if that's the case, what happened to make everyone else appear non-Shin?  We know a few races interbred with the Parshendi, but that shouldn't have given a homogeneous appearance to every non-Shin person on Roshar.  Again, something is strange here, either with what happened or with what we've been told.

It's also worth noting that stone is clearly associated with Odium and his spren.  Where Syl flies about, Odium's spren clearly walk on stone, as seen in the quote above.  The Thunderclasts rise up out of stone.  This might give a new interpretation to the Shin refusal to walk on stone and Szeth's belief that Urithiru was formed of stone unhallowed.  Do the Shin revere/worship Odium?  It seems a bit weird -- they're basically pacifists, after all -- but not entirely implausible.  Still, they can't really be directly allied with Odium, either.  If they were, Odium could've had all the Honorblades by the time of the battle for Thaylen city, since Shinovar isn't all that distant when one's emissaries can fly.

Then again, maybe he does have them already and just didn't want to risk them in the battle?

7) Some spren are changed by Sja-Anat, some are not:

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(See the drawing on page 665, with notes that painspren changed from human hands to clawed hands and shame spren from falling blossoms to shards of broken glass, while hungerspren are apparently unaffected.

What explains this?  Are hungerspren more of Odium so Sja-Anat doesn't feel the need to corrupt them?  Were hungerspren corrupted en masse during some previous Desolation, so that all the present-day "normal" hungerspren are actually the corrupted form of some prior version?  There probably isn't enough information to tell what's going on yet, but maybe someone has ideas.

8) Hoid.  Strange as always:

First, Pattern says Wit feels like "one of us."

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pg 685: “Do you know anything about Wit?” she asked Pattern.

“No,” Pattern said.  “He feels like...mmm...one of us.”

It's not clear whether "one of us" means a Lightweaver, a Radiant, a Cryptic, a spren, or something else.

He also plays around with Shallan's lightweaving/Stormlight in a way that (if I understand correctly) shouldn't be possible:

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pg 791: “Take this fork,” Wit said.  He waved his hand.  Some of her Stormlight split off from her, spinning above his hand and making an image of a floating fork in the darkness.

Maybe he's just drawing it from her spheres, but considering that he needed her help to get the lightweaving going in the first place, it seems a bit strange.  He's piggybacking off of her somehow.  I'm not going to try to guess how, but it's worth noting, perhaps, as a thing he can do.

9) More weirdness with Shallan's lightweaving.  Kaladin's shash brand doesn't stay covered up like it's supposed to:

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pg 692: The soldiers started visibly.  Yes, they could see the brands.  Shallan’s illusion had worn off for some reason?  Hopefully the other disguises fared better.

“A lighteyes with a shash brand?” their lieutenant asked.  “Storms, friend.  You’ve got to have some story.”

Later, Kaladin checks to see that the gem Shallan tied the illusion to still has Stormlight, and it does, so it's not like he sucked it up without realizing it.  Kaladin couldn't get rid of his brand in Words of Radiance, and now Shallan can't cover it up for long, either.  I get that the WoR thing is due to Stormlight healing, but that shouldn't mess with Shallan's illusion, I wouldn't think.

10) There's some weird humming/singing going around in Alethkar:

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pg. 765: “We can handle it,” the woman said smoothly, stepping over as one of the guards held up a torch—not a sphere lamp—and the other lowered the wagon’s tailgate.  “Mmmm...”

Veil turned sharply.  That hum...

The guards started unloading the food.

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pg. 811: “I can hear her,” Elhokar said.  “That’s her voice, singing.”

I know that tune, Kaladin thought.  Something about her soft song was familiar.

First, we've got one of the revelers humming in what I take to be a manner similar to Pattern, then later we've got the queen singing a song that Kaladin almost recognizes.  I'm not really sure what to make of these, but given the apparent importance of music to the Stormlight Archives so far, I think it's worth noting.

11) Syl freaks out after killing a spren:

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pg. 813: The other three red spren streaked away in a panic.  In his hands, Kaladin felt Syl tremble, then groan softly.  He released her, and she took the shape of a small woman.  “That was...that was terrible,” she whispered, floating over to land on his shoulder. “Did we...just kill a spren?”

“The thing deserved it,” Kaladin said.

Syl just huddled on his shoulder, wrapping her arms around herself.

I'm not sure why she's so upset about killing a spren, honestly.  She doesn't have any problem killing humans or Parshendi.  She was even protecting Elhokar's baby from the red spren, so she should be happy.  Maybe it's because she's a spren herself?  But then, she mentions that honorspren hunt at least some types of spren, so that doesn't seem like the answer, either.  Again, something doesn't quite add up here.

12) Sja-Anat mentions a son that Shallan could apparently ask for advice:

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pg 817:We were made, then unmade, she agreed.  But no, not an enemy!  The figure turned humanlike again, though the eyes remained glowing white.  It pressed its hands against the glass.  Ask my son. Please.

So at first I thought she might have Renarin's spren, but this doesn't work because Renarin isn't even anywhere near Shallan at the time, so she certainly can't stop and ask Glys for advice on whether to use the Oathgate even if she were likely to trust a corrupted Radiant spren anyway, which seems doubtful.  So who or what could Sja-Anat be referring to?  It has to be someone nearby and who Shallan would find trustworthy.

13) Winespren: sometimes rare, sometimes common:

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(See the drawing on page 888 that mentions/implies that winespren are rare in at least one Vorin country but very common in another.

I know it's mentioned that some spren are more location-dependent than others, but why is this the case?  I could see it if one country tended to drink a lot more alcohol than its neighbors, but from what I can tell, people all over Roshar are drinking a lot of alcohol.  So why would the winespren only hang out in just one spot?

14) Syl's memory doesn't come back at all when she returns to the Cognitive Realm:

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pg 893: Syl walked beside him, mostly quiet.  Being back on this side troubled her.  She’d look at things, like the occasional colorful plant, and cock her head as if trying to remember.  “It’s like a dream from the time when I was dead,” she’d said when he prompted her.

Maybe I don't quite get what's going on, but since she had to leave most of her memory behind when she left the Shadesmar, I'd have thought that she'd have gotten her memory back when she returned to Shadesmar.  Instead it looks like she's going to continue getting it back piece by piece, as Kaladin progresses with his Oaths.  From a meta perspective, I get that there are probably narrative reasons to keep her (and thus the main characters) in the dark for a long while yet.  But it's still not what I'd expected.

15) Syl doesn't want to enter the lighthouse:

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pg 914: Out through the room’s window, Kaladin could see Syl standing on the coast, watching out over the sea of beads.  Her hair doesn’t ripple here, he thought.  In the Physical Realm it often waved as if being brushed by an unseen breeze.  Here it acted like the hair of a human.

She hadn’t wanted to enter the lighthouse from some reason.  What was that about?

This might just be that she doesn't like to be confined, which is established more explicitly later, but I wonder if there isn't something more to it.  Pattern goes in and happily starts poking around, so it can't be anything that repels spren in general.

16) Chapter 103:

This is Dalinar's dream/vision of Nohadon where he goes grocery shopping.  It's pretty weird.  I'm not sure if it's supposed to be a dream or if it's supposed to be magical.  It doesn't quite seem like either one -- too coherent for a dream, but too incoherent to be a vision.

17) Odium's word versus Preservation's:

Mistborn original trilogy spoilers:

Spoiler

So several times throughout the Stormlight Archive, it's mentioned that Odium has to keep his word if he agrees to a duel of champions.  I don't really get why, though.  Preservation was able to break his promise to let Ruin wreck Scandrial.  Odium's response to Dalinar was basically "Sure, I agree," and now -- if I'm understanding correctly -- he's supposed to be bound to his word.  Presumably Ruin would have demanded at least as much assurance from Preservation?

I'm not sure if this is a plot hole or somehow a plot point, but it sure seems weird to me.

 

So anyway, that's my big list of "weird Oathbringer stuff" that might or might not be worth talking about.  If there's anything I missed -- and there almost certainly is -- feel free to point it out.

[Weltall]

Awesome compilation. I'll have to think about some of these, but for now a couple thoughts on the ones I think I have answers for, off the top of my head.

59 minutes ago, galendo said:

So why didn't the Fused lash Moash?  They can clearly lash people, since Moash himself got lashed upwards during the fight in the same scene and Kaladin later got lashed sideways.  Seems strange that they'd choose to carry him rather than lash him.

Possibly, they chose not to lash him because it would be more painful for him to be carried that way. He did just kill one of them, even if it didn't stick because the Fused can resurrect  Could be petty sadism rather than any weirdness with their ability to use Gravitation. Though by the same token I do recall Kaladin thinking there was something different to how the Fused were flying compared to what he's used to (I don't have the book handy to check for the exact quote though) so it seems like there's something going on either way.

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6) Odium and his spren appear Shin:

Now supposedly Odium came to Roshar along with the humans, so it's not terribly surprising if he and his look like those original humans.  But if that's the case, what happened to make everyone else appear non-Shin?  We know a few races interbred with the Parshendi, but that shouldn't have given a homogeneous appearance to every non-Shin person on Roshar.  Again, something is strange here, either with what happened or with what we've been told.

Odium is from Yolen rather than Ashyn and was born thousands of years before the exodus to Roshar, so he's not necessarily related to any particular group on Roshar on an ethnic basis. If you took a Rosharan to Scadrial, they'd probably say that a lot of people there 'look Shin' as well. That said, Tanavast and Cultivation apparently both have the epicanthic folds, or at least Dalinar doesn't comment on their appearance the way he does when he sees Rayse. There's definitely things going on with the Shin but I'm not sure we should take Rayse's appearance as an indication of what that could be, at least not just yet. Could be a coincidence. And we'll probably have to wait for Szeth's flashback book to really get into the details.

Assuming that Tanavast and Cultivation's Vessel have the epicanthic folds and don't stand out from Rosharan humans in that respect, possibly they actually changed the people of Roshar at the point when humans started worshipping them as a sort of 'you are ours now, let this be a sign' moment, while the people who remained in the original lands that became Shinovar were left out. Doesn't require them to be followers of Odium, just that they didn't actively seek out other gods to worship. We know that modifying an entire planet's population is well within the power of a Shard.

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8) Hoid.  Strange as always:

First, Pattern says Wit feels like "one of us."

It's not clear whether "one of us" means a Lightweaver, a Radiant, a Cryptic, a spren, or something else.

It's Hoid, it could easily be 'all of the above'. xD He's already a Lightweaver (albeit not the Rosharan variant at that point), he seems like he's going to become a Radiant at the end of the book and between his love of lies/his tenuous relationship with the truth and the fact that he's apparently got a crazy spiritweb (and is sort of timeless, in the way that spren are) he might well seem like a Cryptic or a spren more generally from Pattern's perspective. He even self-describes himself has having 'begun life as a concept, a thought'.

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9) More weirdness with Shallan's lightweaving.  Kaladin's shash brand doesn't stay covered up like it's supposed to:

Later, Kaladin checks to see that the gem Shallan tied the illusion to still has Stormlight, and it does, so it's not like he sucked it up without realizing it.  Kaladin couldn't get rid of his brand in Words of Radiance, and now Shallan can't cover it up for long, either.  I get that the WoR thing is due to Stormlight healing, but that shouldn't mess with Shallan's illusion, I wouldn't think.

I was going to say something about maybe Kaladin's own innate Investiture is interfering with the Lightweaving even if he wasn't drawing on that sphere's worth of stormlight or doing any surgebinding, but then I remembered that the earlier illusion where she made him look really ugly stayed so... got me.

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11) Syl freaks out after killing a spren:

I'm not sure why she's so upset about killing a spren, honestly.

Spren aren't really supposed to be able to die. She mentioned in Words of Radiance (IIRC) that even when you 'kill' a spren they're still there, look at the deadeyes for example. But actually and permanently ending the existence of a spren seems to be something very different and it probably doesn't happen often.

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13) Winespren: sometimes rare, sometimes common:

I know it's mentioned that some spren are more location-dependent than others, but why is this the case?  I could see it if one country tended to drink a lot more alcohol than its neighbors, but from what I can tell, people all over Roshar are drinking a lot of alcohol.  So why would the winespren only hang out in just one spot?

Nazh seems confused by this one too, mentioning in his annotations to the alcohol illustration that he sees them all the time. There's probably a conceptual thing at work, where they appear in some places but not others because of the way that they think (or don't think) about alcohol or intoxication, which attracts the spren.

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14) Syl's memory doesn't come back at all when she returns to the Cognitive Realm:

Maybe I don't quite get what's going on, but since she had to leave most of her memory behind when she left the Shadesmar, I'd have thought that she'd have gotten her memory back when she returned to Shadesmar.  Instead it looks like she's going to continue getting it back piece by piece, as Kaladin progresses with his Oaths.  From a meta perspective, I get that there are probably narrative reasons to keep her (and thus the main characters) in the dark for a long while yet.  But it's still not what I'd expected.

While it was the process of transitioning into the Physical that damaged her memories, the end result is the spren equivalent of neurological damage rather than a location-dependant thing. Dunno, I never got the impression that transitioning fully back to the Cognitive would automatically restore her memories.

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15) Syl doesn't want to enter the lighthouse:

This might just be that she doesn't like to be confined, which is established more explicitly later, but I wonder if there isn't something more to it.  Pattern goes in and happily starts poking around, so it can't be anything that repels spren in general.

Given what goes on in that lighthouse, maybe she's got a strong aversion to people trying to see the future? She's Honorspren so maybe that sort of thing bothers her more than it does Pattern, as a reflection on the general 'seeing the future is of Odium' thing that the series has going on? It doesn't have to be strictly true for Syl to feel uncomfortable about it.

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16) Chapter 103:

This is Dalinar's dream/vision of Nohadon where he goes grocery shopping.  It's pretty weird.  I'm not sure if it's supposed to be a dream or if it's supposed to be magical.  It doesn't quite seem like either one -- too coherent for a dream, but too incoherent to be a vision.

This... is a very good question. I've seen some theories (like this one) but I haven't sat down to read them yet in detail. I should probably do that...

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17) Odium's word versus Preservation's:

This could depend on exact words. I can imagine several ways Preservation could have phrased a promise that would allow for what happened in Mistborn without him technically breaking his word.

Spoiler

For example, promising Ruin would have the opportunity to destroy Scadrial when the time was right doesn't necessarily guarantee that Ruin will be allowed to destroy it, just make the attempt (as he does) before getting stopped. And since the attempt was made, the whole 'imprisoned for thousands of years' bit doesn't technically break the letter of the agreement even if it may have broken what Ati thought was the spirit of it.

 

Edited February 27, 2018 by Weltall

[RShara]

I think the reason Kaladin's brands don't stay covered is because his perception of himself is scarred.  It didn't affect the cover-everything illusion because that wasn't himself.  The illusion to hide the brands was himself-minus-brands.  So just like the tattoos, it didn't stick.

[+Hoiditthroughthegrapevine]

Really nice post @galendo, here are a couple of possible explanations for some of the weird items you bring up:

3 hours ago, galendo said:

7) Some spren are changed by Sja-Anat, some are not:

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(See the drawing on page 665, with notes that painspren changed from human hands to clawed hands and shame spren from falling blossoms to shards of broken glass, while hungerspren are apparently unaffected.

What explains this?  Are hungerspren more of Odium so Sja-Anat doesn't feel the need to corrupt them?  Were hungerspren corrupted en masse during some previous Desolation, so that all the present-day "normal" hungerspren are actually the corrupted form of some prior version?  There probably isn't enough information to tell what's going on yet, but maybe someone has ideas.

So when Shallan and Co first get to Kholinar Shallan observes some hungerspren around a refuge that didn't look any different, and she mentions this in chapter 62 as she is doing her unusual research to summon pain and shame spren to study what the corrupted spren look like. But later, in chapter 72 after Veil's infiltration of Brightness Nananav's mansion of Rockfall to steal food to buy her way into the Heart of the Revel she makes the following observation:

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Was it only her imagination, or did the people lining the streets today look hungrier than they had on previous days? Hungerspren buzzed about the heads of the people, like black specks, or little flies of the type you could find sometimes on rotting plants.

Normal uncorrupted hungerspren look like brown flies that flit around the hungry person, the hungerspren that Veil sees after the Rockfall infiltration are corrupted.

I think this shows that the corruption of spren (or at least certain categories of spren) is a willful and intentional act by Sja-anat and not simply an area effect (like the thrill). The fact that corrupted pain, shame, and anticipation spren were seen when Shallan and Co first arrived at Kholinar but hungerspren were unaffected shows that at the least Sja-anat can limit what spren are corrupted by her influence, and further I think it points strongly to the possibility that the Spren are corrupted by a willful act on Sja-anat's part. Also the quote seems to possibly imply that the corrupted spren might be responsible for an increase in the hunger being experienced by those that attracted them. This would be interesting because it would imply that Sja-anat's corruption of spren is instrumental, in that corrupted spren have an ability to affect the person/persons that are experiencing the emotion or effect that attracted the spren in the first place by augementing or warping the emotion/sensation/condition that attracts the spren. Pretty useful ability for the enemy spymaster to have.

2 hours ago, Weltall said:

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6) Odium and his spren appear Shin:

Now supposedly Odium came to Roshar along with the humans, so it's not terribly surprising if he and his look like those original humans.  But if that's the case, what happened to make everyone else appear non-Shin?  We know a few races interbred with the Parshendi, but that shouldn't have given a homogeneous appearance to every non-Shin person on Roshar.  Again, something is strange here, either with what happened or with what we've been told.

Odium is from Yolen rather than Ashyn and was born thousands of years before the exodus to Roshar, so he's not necessarily related to any particular group on Roshar on an ethnic basis. If you took a Rosharan to Scadrial, they'd probably say that a lot of people there 'look Shin' as well. That said, Tanavast and Cultivation apparently both have the epicanthic folds, or at least Dalinar doesn't comment on their appearance the way he does when he sees Rayse. There's definitely things going on with the Shin but I'm not sure we should take Rayse's appearance as an indication of what that could be, at least not just yet. Could be a coincidence. And we'll probably have to wait for Szeth's flashback book to really get into the details.

In visions from Venli's PoV Odium appears to her as a Singer, still with the white gold scepter, so he does alter his appearance when appearing to different people. I get the sense that his appearance to Venli is the outlier and that he truly resembles a Shin because his spren are also described as looking shin-like. One possible explanation for why Tanavast and Cultivation don't look shin like is that they are Gods to the people of Roshar. The collective belief of sentient beings shapes the cognitive manifestation of things. Possibly, because of the long time that they both have been Gods to the people of Roshar, the self-perception of the vessel's in regards to their physical being has shifted so that they view themselves as looking closer in appearance to the majority of the population that worshiped and revered them. This would be an inversion of the God created man in his image, in this case Man made god appear to himself in man's image. But because Odium is not actually worshiped on Roshar and is not directly invested on Roshar, his self perceived identity hasn't been warped by collective belief.

2 hours ago, Weltall said:

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8) Hoid.  Strange as always:

First, Pattern says Wit feels like "one of us."

It's not clear whether "one of us" means a Lightweaver, a Radiant, a Cryptic, a spren, or something else.

It's Hoid, it could easily be 'all of the above'. xD He's already a Lightweaver (albeit not the Rosharan variant at that point), he seems like he's going to become a Radiant at the end of the book and between his love of lies/his tenuous relationship with the truth and the fact that he's apparently got a crazy spiritweb (and is sort of timeless, in the way that spren are) he might well seem like a Cryptic or a spren more generally from Pattern's perspective. He even self-describes himself has having 'begun life as a concept, a thought'.

He also says in that bit partially quoted that he "started out as words on a page". Hoid often says the simple truth of a fact in a way that sounds like he is being allegorical, when in actuality he is just telling a straightforward truth. The reason that it sounds like metaphoric hyperbole stems from the fact that he has led an unbelievably weird life. I think Pattern is saying that he is like a higher spen, in that Hoid seems like an idea that has been brought to life. Curiouser and Curiouser.

3 hours ago, galendo said:

12) Sja-Anat mentions a son that Shallan could apparently ask for advice:

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pg 817:We were made, then unmade, she agreed.  But no, not an enemy!  The figure turned humanlike again, though the eyes remained glowing white.  It pressed its hands against the glass.  Ask my son. Please.

So at first I thought she might have Renarin's spren, but this doesn't work because Renarin isn't even anywhere near Shallan at the time, so she certainly can't stop and ask Glys for advice on whether to use the Oathgate even if she were likely to trust a corrupted Radiant spren anyway, which seems doubtful.  So who or what could Sja-Anat be referring to?  It has to be someone nearby and who Shallan would find trustworthy.

This could be referring to the corrupted Gloryspren that Shallan talks to in Shadesmar, who basically is an intermediary that Sja-anat uses to tell Shallan of her desire to defect. Or this could be referring to Renarin's corrupted spren (which I think is far more likely) and Sja-anat knows that there is a great likelihood that Shallan and Renarin will be reunited in the future.

It's interesting to note that Sja-anat is able to speak through the corrupted gloryspren, directly into Shallan's mind from Kholinar while Shallan is at Riino's lighthouse. Here is the scene from Chapter 97:

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Shallan and the others dodged for cover, but too slowly. The strange spren flitted right under their small canopy.

Overhead, the clouds started to ripple with a vibrant set of colors.

The corrupted gloryspren landed on Shallan's arm. Odium suspects that you survived, a voice said in her mind. That...that was the voice of the Unmade from the mirror. Sja-anat. He thinks something strange happened to the Oathgate because of our influence—we've never managed to Enlighten such powerful spren before. It's believable that something odd might happen. I lied, and said that I think you were sent far, far, far from the point of transfer.

He has minions in this realm, and they will be told to hunt you. So take care. Fortunately, he doesn't know that you're a Lightweaver—he thinks you are an Elsecaller for some reason.

I will do what I can, but I'm not sure he trusts me any longer.

The spren fluttered away.

So there is a lot to unpack in that scene. The emphasis of the gloryspren landing on Shallan, might imply that touch between a corrupted spren and a person is necessary for Sja-anat to communicate through the corrupted spren. It also might imply that the additional possible effects (augmentation or warping of effect) of the corrupted spren would likewise need to be transmitted through touch.

Another interesting bit is how Sja-anat slips between the plural prounoun of we and singular pronoun of I. She uses the plural pronoun when referring to the act of corrupting the Oathgate and the the singular when talking about how she lied to Odium and how she will see what she can do to help Shallan. Most likely this is because she needed Ashertmarn's help to corrupt the Oathgate, but this could also possibly support the hyphenated theory of increased sapience for the Unmade theory. Possibly the we is in reference to two constituent components of her identity that were created by a Herald breaking 2 times under torture in Damnation. I think this is pretty shaky proof (the Ashertman explanation seems a lot more plausible) but I thought I would just throw this out there.

Edited February 27, 2018 by hoiditthroughthegrapevine
Typos, typos, typos

[WhiteLeeopard]

4 hours ago, galendo said:

5) Lopen looks under rocks for some strange reason:

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pg 542: They all seemed to find this comforting.  Well, except Lopen, who had snuck away from the group and for some reason was lifting up rocks on the other side of the plateau and looking underneath them.  Even among humans, he was a strange one.

Now this could just be an instance of Lopen being weird, but it's hand-waved off a little too blithely for that to be the case.  Lopen might be different, but he's not the sort of different that does things for no reason.  Maybe he's supposed to be humoring his spren?  Syl might want to look under rocks just to see what's beneath them, so that could be it.  The scene in question is a pretty touching Bridge Four moment.  It seems strange to call out Lopen for behaving bizarrely unless there's some ulterior motive behind it.  He's never done anything that seemingly nonsensical before.

I just passed this part in my reread and I think it was Lopen playing hide and seek with his spren. He did say something at the end about playing games like that with his glowy friend . And if Lopen were just showing something to his spren Rlain would see it, as he is a parshendi, he can see spren.

[Bort]

I've tried to touch on all of your points, but will admit that this is still about 75% speculation.

1. Pretty sure, yes, Syl is referring to Tien. Later on, in a letter from the Ghostbloods, Mraize tells Shallan that the only person to have bonded a Spren in Amaram's army was already dead. Makes me wonder just how deliberate that sword thrust was that cut Tien down.

2. Yes, Urithiru is rather odd. I suspect it is because Urithiru wasn't built, like a normal city, but it was grown. There is a conversation between Navani and Dalinar that discusses this, talking about a heart of emerald and ruby (I think it was ruby), and veins of garnet.

3. That place doesn't ring any bells for me, I'm afraid. As for why, why not?

4. I'm not sure why we didn't see the Fused Lash people for travel. We have seen them use it in combat. They tried to Lash both Kaladin and Moash at different points in the book. (Also, just one other point, there is another way into Urithiru - it is mentioned as discovered in the tunnels where Re-Shephir fled, which are scouted out so Navani and Jasnah can set up their scholars in the gem column room).

5. That's Lopen playing with his Spren.

6. Odium isn't from Roshar, so looks like the descendants of the original humans on Roshar, the Shin.

7. As has already been pointed out, hungerspren appear brown, where those Shallan saw later on were black, so my guess is that Sja-anat just hadn't bothered.

8. Hoid has many strange abilities, and I think Pattern is saying that Hoid is a lot like a spren. Especially when you hear Hoid's own description about how he came to be (Way of Kings, I believe, talking to Kaladin) - he stole himself, was born of words of a page, that sort of thing. 

9. I have no idea.

10. I don't think your quotes are related. The first, I got the impression that the 'Mmmm' Veil heard was a Cryptic, very much like Pattern. This might be the one that Hoid rescues at the end of OB, or it could be a corrupted one hanging around the Revel. Or, it could be a spot of foreshadowing. Do Cryptics already serve Odium?

11. Imagine being a hunter. You shoot deer or whatever, then discover that the thing you just shot was actually a guy wearing a horse costume. You're not going to feel great about it. I think that's all it was.

12. Sja-anat's child is, I believe at least, Glys. It is left vaguely vague though, so I could well be wrong.

13. Maybe they like to hang out where the wine gets made, who knows. Roshar's ocean is vast, so why does Cusisech (or however you spell that) stay in one place?

14. I wasn't expecting it to. It was the transition from the cognitive to the physical that broke her, time and oaths are what will heal her, not simply going home.

15. I think this is because Syl was already freaking out about being recognised.

16. For this one, I think something weird is going on here. i think Dalinar is actually talking to Nohadon. There is also WoB where he being evasive about how Nohadon is still alive (apparently).

17. Different worlds, different Shards, different rules. I suspect that Odium's problem here is that his initial agreement was with Honour who, despite being dead, is still invested enough into Roshar to hold Odium to the pact. Whatever the pact was.

Edited February 27, 2018 by Bort

[Felt]

Nicely done!! I'm still busy with my reread, but this is great work. My own will follow the reread, but here's a few of my musings on your topics:

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2) Urithiru is weird:

pg 522: —tests confirm something is different here.  Temperatures are distinctly lower on other nearby peaks of the same elevation—

• This is Jasnah eavesdropping. In my opinion it sounds like they are talking about the Horneater peaks, not about Urithiru. There is something strange going on at the Peaks.

4) Something is different about the Fused's lashings:So why didn't the Fused lash Moash?  They can clearly lash people, since Moash himself got lashed upwards during the fight in the same scene and Kaladin later got lashed sideways.  Seems strange that they'd choose to carry him rather than ln, we see that the flying Fused use their lashings pretty profligately.  I don't have a quote, but there's a scene where one of the Fused hovers while reading a book, apparently just because he/she can.  Also, the Fused in Shadesmar are flying about willy-nilly despite Investiture apparently being more difficult to get there.  In fact, I don't think we've ever seen a Fused run out of juice.  Something's clearly different here.

• Lashing someone and flying them with lashings through the air is different. Kaladin needed practice to do it. The Fused are relearning their abilities slowly, or maybe even haven't learned yet how to fly someone else around, hence the carrying.

5) Lopen looks under rocks for some strange reason:

• I noticed this one too, and he could be playing games with his spren, which is most likely. But what if we take the wild theory train, what if the Lopen knows more than the others? For example, what if he's looking for spying cremlings and he knows about the Aimians?

6) It's also worth noting that stone is clearly associated with Odium:

Quote

It's also worth noting that stone is clearly associated with Odium and his spren.  Where Syl flies about, Odium's spren clearly walk on stone, as seen in the quote above.  The Thunderclasts rise up out of stone.  This might give a new interpretation to the Shin refusal to walk on stone and Szeth's belief that Urithiru was formed of stone unhallowed.  Do the Shin revere/worship Odium?  It seems a bit weird -- they're basically pacifists, after all -- but not entirely implausible.  Still, they can't really be directly allied with Odium, either.  If they were, Odium could've had all the Honorblades by the time of the battle for Thaylen city, since Shinovar isn't all that distant when one's emissaries can fly.

Then again, maybe he does have them already and just didn't want to risk them in the battle?

• This is very interested indeed, and I think we'll get more of this in Szeth's book. I think they don't walk on stone because it IS associated with Odium.
  For now I think it's worth noting that the Shin where not always pacifistic. They fought at Aharietiam, which is seen in Dalinars vision, and there are more references to them fighting and even invading other countries. p.42. "Kalami gasped softly. No man had ever united the entire continent - not during the Shin invasions, not during the height of the Hierocracy, not during the Sunmakers conquest."

[Carla Bridge Four]

The light, can't it be the light that Dalinar feels and associates with a greater god than Honor/Odium/Cultivation?

And, for songs and rhythms, I guess there are humans like Kaladin more intimatelly feeling Roshar, and thus, its rhythms (like the listeners or horneaters do).

Great compilation!

[The One Who Connects]

10 hours ago, galendo said:

I know it's mentioned that some Spren are more location-dependent than others, but why is this the case?  I could see it if one country tended to drink a lot more alcohol than its neighbors, but from what I can tell, people all over Roshar are drinking a lot of alcohol.  So why would the Winespren only hang out in just one spot?

Could be a similar case to why you don't see many Emotion Spren around large crowds.

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Mandi
In [Words of Radiance] Shallan notes that spren don't appear around dense groups of people, even if emotions are high. Why is that?

Brandon Sanderson
You'll find out more eventually. There are several reasons, but imagine how a creature attracted to a specific color would respond if you dumped every color together in a big mess.

Your average tavern would have quite the mix of emotions going on. People drinking to forget something(sadness, shame, gloom), to numb themselves(pain, anger, cold), drinking after a long day(hunger, exhaustion), liquid courage(fear), drunken revelry(laughter, music), etc... It's entirely possible that the Winespren can't easily see what they are looking for in order to manifest.

11 hours ago, galendo said:

15) Syl doesn't want to enter the lighthouse. Pattern goes in and happily starts poking around, so it can't be anything that repels spren in general.

This might be an artifact of earlier revisions, combined with a dislike of confined spaces.

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I revised part four heavily, moving the scene where Kaladin runs into our "so very beautiful" friend from Elantris (and the subsequent dip into the Spiritual Realm) from happening in the market to happening in the Lighthouse. Originally, the Lighthouse was run by Cryptics. (Which was a lot of fun.) However, I needed stronger establishment of Kaladin's motivations earlier in Part Four, which was going kind of off-the-rails a little.

Honorspren and Cryptics don't get along, so I don't think it's a coincidence that the Cryptic was willing to explore.

[WhiteLeeopard]

This is not a curiosity so much as a comment, but since this thread is here I decided it was a good place to put it. First time Odium and Dalinar meet on the visions:

Quote

Dalinar stood up. "I offer you a challange of champions. With terms to be discussed. Will you accept it?"

...

"Either way, I don't accept." Odium stood taller, smiling in an unnervingly understanding way.

Thank sweet Adonalsium that Odium said no right there! Because if he had said yes...

But, why exactly did Odum refuse such a golden opportunity? Dalinar would have agreed right there, and the only one possibly cold blooded enough to face the Blackthorn is Szeth, who Dalinar would have never chosen as Honor's champion at that point.

[Landis963]

1 hour ago, WhiteLeeopard said:

This is not a curiosity so much as a comment, but since this thread is here I decided it was a good place to put it. First time Odium and Dalinar meet on the visions:

Thank sweet Adonalsium that Odium said no right there! Because if he had said yes...

But, why exactly did Odum refuse such a golden opportunity? Dalinar would have agreed right there, and the only one possibly cold blooded enough to face the Blackthorn is Szeth, who Dalinar would have never chosen as Honor's champion at that point.

Because Dalinar wasn't in a position to be efficacious if turned.  They were in an Honor-vision at the time, if memory serves, and Dalinar's body was still in Urithiru, miles away from any Fused battalion he could have used as shock troops.  (Whether it would have actually worked is a question for Brandon at another time, the point is that Odium considered it not worth the trouble) 

[digitalbusker]

@galendo, have you read Mistborn: Secret History? I wonder if the in between place is reminding you of

Spoiler

the version of the CR that Kelsier sees after he dies, the one where Preservation greets everyone as they die.

Perhaps Tanavast used to do that, and the Stormfather misses it. Or perhaps he still does it. We do still need an explanation for that difference between Scadrial's CR and Roshar's.

[Felt]

16 hours ago, WhiteLeeopard said:

This is not a curiosity so much as a comment, but since this thread is here I decided it was a good place to put it. First time Odium and Dalinar meet on the visions:

Thank sweet Adonalsium that Odium said no right there! Because if he had said yes...

But, why exactly did Odum refuse such a golden opportunity? Dalinar would have agreed right there, and the only one possibly cold blooded enough to face the Blackthorn is Szeth, who Dalinar would have never chosen as Honor's champion at that point.

Dalinar didnt have the memories of Rathalas and killing Evi, and for Odium Dalinar has to except willingly. Without the memories, Dalinar wouldn't have excepted. Thats why Odium waited for the 'right' moment to let Dalinar feel the guilt and then give in to Odium to be his champion.

[Landis963]

17 hours ago, WhiteLeeopard said:

Thank sweet Adonalsium that Odium said no right there! Because if he had said yes...

But, why exactly did Odum refuse such a golden opportunity? Dalinar would have agreed right there, and the only one possibly cold blooded enough to face the Blackthorn is Szeth, who Dalinar would have never chosen as Honor's champion at that point.

Because Dalinar wasn't in a good place for Odium to capitalize on his newly acquired mole.  (Persuasion wouldn't be a problem, because this is long before Dalinar remembered Rathalas, and if Odium had committed to poaching Dalinar prematurely, he would just have returned all of Dalinar's real memories right then and there) However, they were in an Honor-vision at the time, and Dalinar's body was in Urithiru, miles away from any handy regiment of Fused.  (I seem to recall that Odium wasn't in a position where he could take advantage of an Oathgate at the time, so there's that) In the meantime, Odium would need to micro-manage Dalinar so that he could keep his cover, or have him kill everyone in the tower (also, no Thrill in miles).  

[galendo]

Wow, so many great responses!  Thanks to all!  I don't have time to respond to everyone's every point, but I'll try to hit a few of the ones that stand out to me:

On 2/26/2018 at 8:59 PM, Weltall said:

Possibly, they chose not to lash him because it would be more painful for him to be carried that way. He did just kill one of them, even if it didn't stick because the Fused can resurrect  Could be petty sadism rather than any weirdness with their ability to use Gravitation. Though by the same token I do recall Kaladin thinking there was something different to how the Fused were flying compared to what he's used to (I don't have the book handy to check for the exact quote though) so it seems like there's something going on either way.

This is a very good point.  I'm not sure that I buy it entirely, since it seems like there would be plenty of other ways to mess with Moash if they felt like it, which they apparently didn't.  But it's a perfectly reasonable explanation.

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While it was the process of transitioning into the Physical that damaged her memories, the end result is the spren equivalent of neurological damage rather than a location-dependant thing. Dunno, I never got the impression that transitioning fully back to the Cognitive would automatically restore her memories

Huh.  I didn't really think about it as neurological damage, though I suppose that must be it.  The way I was thinking was that spren were usually 100% in the Cognitive, where they were intelligent, but that Radient spren were bringing themselves partway into the Physical Realm (leaving them, say, 50% Physical and 50% Cognitive -- not that physical and not that bright).  Then the nahel bond drew them further into the Physical, but simultaneously supplemented their reduced Cognitive abilities with the Radiant's own intelligence.  It explains the mindless screaming of the deadblades (trapped mostly in the Physical with only a hint of Cognitive -- maybe just enough to comprehend the horror of their situation).

The mental trauma interpretation fits better with what we saw in Oathbringer, so I like that, but at the same time it fails to explain why Syl would "go dumb" as her bond regressed like we saw in WoR.  Once the mental trauma from the transition was healed, one wouldn't think that losing the bond would cause the spren to regress.

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This could depend on exact words. I can imagine several ways Preservation could have phrased a promise that would allow for what happened in Mistborn without him technically breaking his word.

  Reveal hidden contents

For example, promising Ruin would have the opportunity to destroy Scadrial when the time was right doesn't necessarily guarantee that Ruin will be allowed to destroy it, just make the attempt (as he does) before getting stopped. And since the attempt was made, the whole 'imprisoned for thousands of years' bit doesn't technically break the letter of the agreement even if it may have broken what Ati thought was the spirit of it.

I guess, though it kind of relies on Ruin being pretty darn stupid.  If you knew that your polar opposite, your mortal enemy, who was compelled by his very nature to try to thwart you at every turn, needed to keep the precise letter of his oath...I dunno, it seems like you'd make pretty sure there wasn't any weasel room in whatever agreement you reached.

On 2/26/2018 at 9:28 PM, RShara said:

I think the reason Kaladin's brands don't stay covered is because his perception of himself is scarred.  It didn't affect the cover-everything illusion because that wasn't himself.  The illusion to hide the brands was himself-minus-brands.  So just like the tattoos, it didn't stick.

But the tattoos did stick, at least until he drew in Stormlight.  I'd have to double-check, but I don't recall him breathing in Light during that sequence.  He might have breathed some in unconsciously, I suppose.

On 2/26/2018 at 11:47 PM, hoiditthroughthegrapevine said:

Normal uncorrupted hungerspren look like brown flies that flit around the hungry person, the hungerspren that Veil sees after the Rockfall infiltration are corrupted.

Wow, I totally missed that.  So normal hungerspren are brown, but corrupted ones are black?  Makes sense.

It kind of prompts another question, though: Why would Sja-anat corrupt painspren and shamespren first, then get around to corrupting hungerspren later?

Quote

This could be referring to the corrupted Gloryspren that Shallan talks to in Shadesmar, who basically is an intermediary that Sja-anat uses to tell Shallan of her desire to defect. Or this could be referring to Renarin's corrupted spren (which I think is far more likely) and Sja-anat knows that there is a great likelihood that Shallan and Renarin will be reunited in the future

Does Sja-anat think that Shalan would trust a corrupted gloryspren?  Also, Shallan's thinking of using the Oathgate now.  There isn't time to speak with Glys/Renarin, who are hundreds of miles away.  I suppose Sja-anat could be urging her to talk with Glys to confirm the "not an enemy" part in some distant future, but they were basically arguing over whether Shallan should activate the Oathgate right then.  I took her words to be in reference to that, especially since she seems to think that Shallan will likely die if the Oathgate is activated.

On 2/27/2018 at 2:16 AM, Bort said:

2. Yes, Urithiru is rather odd. I suspect it is because Urithiru wasn't built, like a normal city, but it was grown. There is a conversation between Navani and Dalinar that discusses this, talking about a heart of emerald and ruby (I think it was ruby), and veins of garnet.

The question is how you'd grow a city, though.  None of the magics we've seen so far could do it.  Though I suppose it's not too terribly different from the way some of Odium's spren can create a Thunderclast out of solid rock.

Quote

10. I don't think your quotes are related. The first, I got the impression that the 'Mmmm' Veil heard was a Cryptic, very much like Pattern. This might be the one that Hoid rescues at the end of OB, or it could be a corrupted one hanging around the Revel. Or, it could be a spot of foreshadowing. Do Cryptics already serve Odium

You know, I suppose it very well could have been a Cryptic's hum she heard.  There should be one hanging around Elhokar, after all.  Though why it would go with Shallan to deliver food is a bit of a mystery.

I don't think there's really much reason to believe that Cryptics serve Odium, though.  Pattern certainly doesn't seem to.  Though there were an awful lot of them hanging around Kharbranth in TWoK, now that I think about it.  Though of course the Diagram wasn't about serving Odium but stopping him, so that's not particularly strong evidence either.

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11. Imagine being a hunter. You shoot deer or whatever, then discover that the thing you just shot was actually a guy wearing a horse costume. You're not going to feel great about it. I think that's all it was.

Yeah, but she said at one point that they had hunts for spren in Shadesmar, the way that Alethi hunted chasmfiends.  So it's not like they're unused to killing spren, I wouldn't think.  If it hadn't been a pretty clearly evil spren tormenting a child I could understand her shock, but she seems pretty blase about hunting certain kinds of spren.

It makes me wonder if the spren wasn't a corrupted version of a type that honorspren wouldn't have hunted.  That might be enough to trigger her aversion, I suppose, though even then it seems like it'd be more like killing a zombie rather than a person.

On 2/27/2018 at 3:10 AM, Felt said:

• This is Jasnah eavesdropping. In my opinion it sounds like they are talking about the Horneater peaks, not about Urithiru. There is something strange going on at the Peaks.

It could be referring to the Horneater peaks, though in that case I'd expect the line to be "something is different there" rather than "something is different here", since they're at Urithiru at the time.

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I noticed this one too, and he could be playing games with his spren, which is most likely. But what if we take the wild theory train, what if the Lopen knows more than the others? For example, what if he's looking for spying cremlings and he knows about the Aimians?

This makes me think -- do we know who the Herdezians are descended from to get their hard nails?  The Horneaters clearly have some Parshendi blood to see spren and hear rhythms.  The only other sentient race that we know about is the Aimians.  Maybe Lopen does know something about spying cremlings.

Quote

For now I think it's worth noting that the Shin where not always pacifistic. They fought at Aharietiam, which is seen in Dalinars vision, and there are more references to them fighting and even invading other countries. p.42. "Kalami gasped softly. No man had ever united the entire continent - not during the Shin invasions, not during the height of the Hierocracy, not during the Sunmakers conquest."

It doesn't surprise me a bit that the Shin fought at Aharietiam.  My theory for their pacifism was that they fully believed the Herald's proclamation of victory at the time, which made further fighting on Roshar unnecessary.  Though the Shin invasions are weird and out of character for the present-day Shin, at least from the little we know about them.

On 2/27/2018 at 7:29 AM, The One Who Connects said:

This might be an artifact of earlier revisions, combined with a dislike of confined spaces.

That's an interesting quote.  It would make more sense for spren to inhabit a lighthouse in the middle of nowhere, too, since they don't need to eat or drink or anything.  I wonder what the Cryptics would get out of it, though.  Maybe tales from travelers?  Those do tend to contain the occasional departure from the truth.

On 2/27/2018 at 1:33 PM, WhiteLeeopard said:

Thank sweet Adonalsium that Odium said no right there! Because if he had said yes...

But, why exactly did Odum refuse such a golden opportunity? Dalinar would have agreed right there, and the only one possibly cold blooded enough to face the Blackthorn is Szeth, who Dalinar would have never chosen as Honor's champion at that point.

You know, that's a good point, too.  Why didn't Odium take up Dalinar on his offer?

Perhaps it was still too much of a risk.  Dalinar wouldn't have picked Szeth, that's for sure, but he very well might have picked Kaladin.  After wrestling with one of his men, Dalinar admits that maybe he should let one of the younger Radiants be Honor's champion.  Kaladin is mentioned explicitly, if I remember correctly.  And a match between Kaladin and the Blackthorn would be epic.

15 hours ago, digitalbusker said:

@galendo, have you read Mistborn: Secret History? I wonder if the in between place is reminding you of

  Reveal hidden contents

the version of the CR that Kelsier sees after he dies, the one where Preservation greets everyone as they die.

Perhaps Tanavast used to do that, and the Stormfather misses it. Or perhaps he still does it. We do still need an explanation for that difference between Scadrial's CR and Roshar's.

I have read Secret History.  I don't remember it very well -- I only read it once -- but that could well be what I was thinking of.  The empty plain, with the ghostly shapes that rise up out of the ground and then disappear just rings a bell.  Still doesn't really explain why the Stormfather would do a similar thing, though, unless there's an underlying reason for it.

[RShara]

10 minutes ago, galendo said:

But the tattoos did stick, at least until he drew in Stormlight.  I'd have to double-check, but I don't recall him breathing in Light during that sequence.  He might have breathed some in unconsciously, I suppose.

He says something about how he often held a little stormlight by reflex, even in that very tattoo scene

[Bort]

9 hours ago, galendo said:

The question is how you'd grow a city, though.  None of the magics we've seen so far could do it.  Though I suppose it's not too terribly different from the way some of Odium's spren can create a Thunderclast out of solid rock.

=====================================================

You know, I suppose it very well could have been a Cryptic's hum she heard.  There should be one hanging around Elhokar, after all.  Though why it would go with Shallan to deliver food is a bit of a mystery.

I don't think there's really much reason to believe that Cryptics serve Odium, though.  Pattern certainly doesn't seem to.  Though there were an awful lot of them hanging around Kharbranth in TWoK, now that I think about it.  Though of course the Diagram wasn't about serving Odium but stopping him, so that's not particularly strong evidence either.

======================================================

Yeah, but she said at one point that they had hunts for spren in Shadesmar, the way that Alethi hunted chasmfiends.  So it's not like they're unused to killing spren, I wouldn't think.  If it hadn't been a pretty clearly evil spren tormenting a child I could understand her shock, but she seems pretty blase about hunting certain kinds of spren.

It makes me wonder if the spren wasn't a corrupted version of a type that honorspren wouldn't have hunted.  That might be enough to trigger her aversion, I suppose, though even then it seems like it'd be more like killing a zombie rather than a person.

Growing a city: I imagine the same way that Dalinar persuaded the temple to reassemble. I'm also hoping at some point we see this very same power used to rebuild Aimia.

Cryptic's hum: I on't think there is any reason to believe they serve Odium. That was just random speculation. Maybe it wasn't following Shallan. I think Shallan is wrong about Lightweavers and squires. I think one is looking at Vathah.

Syl killing the Spren: I imagine there is a difference between hunting Spren - we've already seen they use weapons in Shadesmar - and being physically used to run one through.