Need help to prepare myself for Oathbringer

[HarmonicMonk he/him]

Hello 17th Shard, 

I've just joined the forums yesterday and as much as I want to get into this Stormlight Archive section to dive into theories and analysis, I currently can't. This being because I haven't read neither Edgedancet nor Oathbringer yet, so the reason for this post to be is to ask for help in order to start them without having to re read the whole first two books again!!!

I read  the two prequels almost two years ago, so I mostly remember the main plot and characters. The things I'd love you to help me recall are the little details, things like a certain king doing something dark with ill peopke, and a herald coming to the present again or something like that. I also remember a kind of secondary plot refering to a kind of night genius-like goddes who made wishes come true or something like that.

Or if you don't want, or logically, don't have the time to go over all of this (as even the secondary aspects of this saga are enormous and complex), could you please share with me either videos or links to the coppermind that might help?

I guess it is needless to be said that I'd appreciate it if you marked anything about Oathbringer's or Edgedancer's plots as spoiler in this topic. 

Thank you!!!

[Lidolas he/him]

There are summaries on the coppermind wiki that would probably be the best way for you to catch up.  Here's a link to the Way of Kings summary.

https://coppermind.net/wiki/Summary:The_Way_of_Kings

To answer your specific quesitons-

Taravangian (often referred to as Mr. T here for short) is the king of Kharbranth, a small city-state.  He has a boon/curse of being varying degrees of intelligent on different days.  On his 'smartest' day he came up with the Diagram which he wrote all over his bedroom.  It has since been compiled into a book/manuscript.  He also has followers, the group is also called the Diagram.  The Diagram is what pushed Mr T to get Szeth, the Truthless Shin, to kill so many other kings and leaders.

The Nightwatcher, sometimes referred to as the Old Magic, gives people who visit her a boon and a curse.  Some notable visitors are Lift, Dalinar, and Mr T.  You will learn a lot more about that in Oathbringer, and some in Edgedancer.  

[Winds Alight she/her]

Okay, lemme try to help you out, I reread books 1+2 two months ago, I think I got this.
 

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a certain king doing something dark with ill peopke

That's King Taravangian of Kharbranth (the city Jasnah and Shallan are in during WoK). Publicly, he presents himself as a nice old man, not terribly smart, but very caring; Kharbranth is know for its hospitals and surgeons (remember, Kaladin's father wanted to sent him there to train).
A few years ago, he travelled to visit the Nightwatcher, the

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a kind of night genius-like goddes who made wishes come true or something like that

If you go to her and ask what you want, she usually grants you a boon (usually what you asked her but different from what you thought it would be) and a bane.
Taravangian went to the Nightwatcher and his boon seems to be almost ascended intelligence, but it's balanced by days of extremely low intelligence. So each day, he wakes up in a different state - sometimes ridiculously smart, sometimes so stupid he can't even talk and everything in between. On his most intelligent day he created The Diagram, a series of visions (?) and connections concerning almost every character in the Cosmere (kinda). He made that years ago, but since then has never been smart enough to truly understand the Diagram. So, he tries to fill out the gaps and bring order to the rather messy notes he wrote during that day.
For this, he needs the Death Rattles - some people, when they die, say something that doesn't really make sense in the moment but appears to be a vision of the future.
So Taravangian set up the hospitals to gather as many sick and dying people and hear their Death Rattles, writing them all down to get a better sense of the future. He even drains people of their blood so they die slowly enough for a Death Rattle.
 

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a herald coming to the present again

That would be Taln or Talenelat. He was the one Herald who died as stated in the Prelude of WoK. He returned in the epilogue of WoK (Hoid was there) to warn people about the coming Desolation before collapsing.
In book 2, he's only shown briefly, being held in the very messed up Rosharan version of a mental hospital and being completely insane, repeating the same sentences over and over (about helping humans fight off the Desolation and how the Heralds are going to help them learn useful stuff.)

I hope this clears some things up. However, I can only recommend a reread, that's what I did and it was absolutely worth it.
 

[+Invocation]

14 minutes ago, HarmonicMonk said:

things like a certain king doing something dark with ill peopke

That's Taravangian, he's keeping a bunch of people sedated and killing them slowly to get access to prophetic Death Rattles. (You'll see a lot of him in Oathbringer)

14 minutes ago, HarmonicMonk said:

herald coming to the present again or something like that.

The Alethi are currently keeping the Herald Taln in a monastery because they think he's crazy (in they're defense, he only knows how to repeat the same speech over and over after four thousand years of torture).

17 minutes ago, HarmonicMonk said:

refering to a kind of night genius-like goddes who made wishes come true or something like that.

That's the Nightwatcher. You go to visit her and ask for a boon, then she assigns you a bane. It's her way of learning about human-kind. A lot of detail on that in Oathbringer.

Let's see, other plot threads...

There's a group of rogue parshmen roaming around the Shattered Plains somewhere after they ran away from Narak before the whole "make all the parshmen use Stormform to summon the Everstorm" thing that pretty much capped off Words of Radiance.

Kaladin, Shallan, and Adolin are love-triangulating after the whole chasm incident in Words of Radiance.

The queen of Alethkar executed an ardent in one of the previous interludes and now things are all wonky in Alethkar (very little communication happening between them and the Shattered Plains anymore, you'll get details on that in Oathbringer)

Elhokar is maturing as a king some, after the attempted assassination that left Kaladin understanding his limits with the bond and on his Third Oath.

As of the opening of Oathbringer, Kaladin is not with everyone else (not going into details, just that he's doing something he's wanted to do for a long time).

At the end of Words of Radiance, the group of Alethi went though the Oathgate to Urithuru and Oathbringer picks up not too much longer after that, so everyone is disjointed.

That's most of the major ones that would slip through the cracks that I can think of off the top of my head, and there's a small word of advice I'm going to give: DO NOT READ ANYTHING ON THIS FORUM UNTIL YOU'VE AT LEAST GOTTEN THROUGH OATHBRINGER, THE SPOILER PERIOD IS OVER AND THERE IS NO WARNING IN MOST CASES

Also reading Edgedancer will get you a bit of a refresher in and of itself, so doing that is a good idea.

Good luck, and welcome to the Shard!

[I think I am here. he/him]

Oh yeah, and Sadeas is dead.

[+Invocation]

23 minutes ago, I think I am here. said:

Oh yeah, and Sadeas is dead.

That gets thrown back up right at the beginning of Oathbringer, though, so it's not in much danger of being forgotten.

[Kon-Tiki he/him]

Its probably worth re-reading the Gavilar's party intros too

[HarmonicMonk he/him]

Well that was exactly what I needed, thanks a lot @Invocation, @Lidolas and @Winds Alight. These answers were pretty much everything I was looking for.

Ok, appart from these amazing flashbacks you gave me, I'm going to read the coppermind's summary on WoK and WoR as you mentioned and hopefully go trough Edgedancer in less than a week to finally get into Oathbringer. Once again, thank you!!!