[OB]What's up with the Nightwatcher? [spoilers]

[Isilel]

On 11.3.2018 at 11:02 PM, Stormfather-in-Law said:

I'm sure I'm not the first to come up with this, but my working assumption is that Odium is beaten in book 5, and that Cultivation ends up being the "my God Beyond, what have we unleashed?" in book 6.

So, I really hope that you are wrong, because it would be massively disappointing, IMHO. The hoary formula of post-Tolkien fantasy, where the Big Bad is defeated within 1-2 years of making his big push after the millenia of preparation has been massively overused and "oh, look, here is somebody bigger and badder around the corner" was already done by Sanderson, so the same thing happening again would be repetitive.

Not to mention that Odium has several advantages as a villain antagonist that Cultivation doesn't - at least not unless she is willing to destroy Roshar. Namely, Odium is much more lightly invested in Rosharan system than resident Shards normally are, so he is far more mobile and dynamic as a global threat, as he can pack and move very quickly after being released, without losing any of his power, particularly since he doesn't care if he leaves devastation behind. By contrast, Cultivation is very much tied to Roshar, and unless she is willing to rip her power out and destroy it or spend a long time carefully removing and re-absorbing it, she can only be a fairly local threat. Needless to say, I don't see Roshar being destroyed at the end of Stormlight Archives, so this is off the table. And while Cultivation might indeed be an antagonist in the future space trilogy, that's way off.

And of course, the nature of Odium's power and his experience make him very dangerous as well, so much so that his eventual defeat should come at a very high cost to feel believable and earned. OTOH, I just don't see the proper amount of destruction and extinction happening at the end of Book 5 of SA. By the end of the series, yes. Although, I personally also think that Odium will escape Rosharan system severely, even perhaps mortally, wounded and that his power will be picked up by another Shard, which will form a future Big Bad. Either Autonomy or one of the 6 as yet unnamed. Could also be Cultivation too, but that would turn future Rosharans into villain's henchmen and Stormlight Archive ultimately into a tragedy and I don't see Sanderson going for it.

[teknopathetic]

On 3/11/2018 at 3:38 PM, Calderis said:

Or to the Stormfather and Nightwatcher, like it's pointed at in the book. 

The sibling is pretty heavily implied to be the third Bondsmith spren. The connection to those two is apparent. A connection to anything other than those two... I'm not convinced. 

I think the 12 of them (unmade plus 3 bondsmith-spren) might have all been "made" together, but 9 were "unmade" by Odium. All seem capable of learning and changing over time, and all seem capable of changing allegiance. We know the Storm predated the shards, and the Nightwatcher is literally called Old Magic. The evidence seems there to support this idea.