Erunion

Ahahahaaha this was so awesome you guys. I am so, so, so excited for next Tuesday. Ok, Important Things: I was right! Armies of normal parshfolk manipulated/controlled by Odious Voidbringers (now known as The Fused). Kaladin continues to be awesome and thoughtful. And a Big Darn Hero. Gloryspren radiant sub-Spren confirmed! Void light? Or corrupted Stormlight? Only time will tell! Hopefully, instead of getting angry and feeling betrayed, the parshfolk that Kaladin travelled with will be thoughtful and notice the difference in behaviour - that they will reject the control of the voidbringers who will seek to enslave/control them (whereas Kaladin guided them and helped them be more independent). With luck, they will join Rlain (and hopefully Eshonai!!!) in a Free Listener Army. On Shallans chapter: JASNAH IS BACK!!! Yes! I’m so excited! She’s awesome and this will be super interesting! Hopefully she helps with Shallan’s sanity!! Also, Unmade are almost certainly people who were Unmade (someone earlier suggested this: you have my upvote). Re-Shepnir’s trapping appears to be exceptional, and Shallan is on her way to discovering the depredations of the Unmade in Roshar. Awesome.

Upvoted for the crackpot theory - I can def see the shards being numbered 1-16

Mat is and remains my favorite character. And yes, Brandon didn't write him that well (whereas he rocked Perrin). Brandon did a decent job with Mat, but he lacked the nuance that he had with Jordan all through Gathering Storm. He was actually pretty good in Towers of Midnight, and a mixed bag in Memory of Light. It's a forgivable offence - Brandon did a fantastic job elsewhere, and Mat is an incredibly nuanced and complex character.

Don't worry, she changes a LOT. They all do. One thing you may find, a lot of the female characters seem to be annoying and frustrating to deal with. They can be grating, irritating, and dismissive of the male characters. That's not an accident, it's intentional. It's part of the worldbuilding. More in spoilers. Interesting worldbuilding kind of spoiler - read at your own discretion.

What if Re-Shephir isn’t the only way to release Midnight Essence? It could be an ability of a Voidbinder/Voidbringer - who’s Odious surge mimics Re-Shephir’s power in the same way that Kaladin’s windrunning surges mimic Jezriens power.

Thanks @Extesian and @Yata! My objections are neatly removed by WOB. Denth has returned ancestry; likely he and his sister were from the Hallandren/Idrian royal line (unless his sister wasn’t a biological sister, in which case it would just be him). Interesting on only potential heirs being able to inherit. I wonder how far back that goes, and how it’s affected by primogeniture/etc. Going by historical royalty, lots of cousins would be able to inherit if the immediate family were wiped out by a plague or by war. So I’m curious if the Idrian royal family has junior branches as cousins, and if they have Royal Locks, or if that’s just confined to the likely heirs. Also, do heirs lose the locks as their odds of inheriting decrease? So, would the middle sister lose her Royal Locks if Vivenna had a dozen children? What if she had one? What if she had grandchildren?

Do we have WOB that royal cousins don’t have the locks? As in - if the middle sister had kids would they have the locks? However, we can’t jump to the conclusion that Denth was Royal. The Royal Locks are a holdover from their Returned progenitor. Denth is a Returned, suppressing his shape. Likely on one of many different faces. It is entirely plausible that any Returned can have flipping hair at death under the right conditions, and that the same may have happened to Vasher should he have died violently here. Doesnt mean hea NOT royal, merely that that conclusion is uncertain. What is certain however is that the scout is Vivenna

@Wreith - good info! Doesn’t shoot down the theory though, just introduced complications. (Were the humans perhaps banished behind Shin’s mountains? Or were those kept away merely later colonists and the original humans had cheerfully intermingled? Lots of possibilities!) Definitely like the tranquiline halls connection though thanks for the WOB! I’d upvote but I’ve already spent all of mine for today...

@Fifth of Daybreak - the strongest support for ‘intentional tactic’ is how completely unconcerned she seems about all these weird images. She mentions losing her quarry, not all the crazy illusions. The wording is strange though, and could indicate something else.

Which means that they use Investiture to resist shardblades cutting power.

‘The Girl Who Looked Up’ seems to be a few different myths/stories married together with a Stormlight twist. You have the Prometheus and Pandora myths in there. The main character and the tone of the story are both strongly reminiscent of the Fairyland series by Catherynne M. Valante (which I highly recommend - the title of the first is The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship or Her Own Making - a title which should be recommendation enough). The scarf is also reminiscent of something from that series, but could be related to something else (Warbreaker?). The edifice of a giant wall that needed to be climbed rings a bell, but I can’t place it. What this all means though, is that Sanderson wrote a beautiful and enduring myth/fairytale if all of us are having such a strong déjà-vu reaction.

Think ‘rush into an unknown room, illusion swarm while she checks the surroundings and ready herself - notice it’s empty and relax the illusions’. The lack of Stormlight recovery is probably because they were intentionally short illusions; just for a second or two while she got her bearings.

The earlier theory about radiants becoming CS’s is good. This, however, I don’t buy. You see, I’m 95% certain that Shallan lightwove all of those - as distractions. It’s a classic illusionist combat move: send a dozen fakes into a room to draw fire. Zero in Borderlands 2 is a great example of this tactic as well - and I’ve used it in Halo with great effect. So when I read that I was like ‘oh cool! Shallan is learning to use combat illusions!’

Most good stories are.

Simple theory, but profound historical Rosharan implications. The girl who looked up tells the story of a girl who climbed a wall forbidden wall only to find on the other side that she was the monster all along. On the other side they also had Stormlight, and Storms. After she climbed her people experienced these things as well. (Ostensibly). Meanwhile, we have some interesting facts. Shinovar is behind a giant wall of mountains. The storms have no power there. There are few (or no?) Spren. There may not be any Stormlight (unconfirmed). Shinovar has a typical ‘human’, Yolish environment, whereas the rest of Roshar is profoundly alien. The Shin religion holds walking on stone to be profane, meaning religious shin can never leave their valley. The Shin also see using Stormlight as illumination to be profoundly disturbing, implying it’s too holy to use like that and that they don’t have/use Stormlight. Meanwhile, the Listeners were the native rulers of Roshar, who have since been delegated to a slave species. THEORYTIME: The stone shamans prohibition against walking on stone wasn’t originally strictly religious; it was part of a deal, a treaty. Humans settled on Roshar in the Shinovar valley, likely with shardic or other magical help (dawnsingers?), but either way some serious terraforming was done to create a ‘wall’ and to give the valley soil. A deal was made with the Listeners (possibly by the humans, possibly by the shard or dawnsingers that helped set up Shinovar) that the Humans wouldn’t cross over the wall; that it would be illegal for them to walk on the bare rock or Roshar. Thus the humans (likely refugees?) were able to settle an enclave of Roshar in peace. Generations pass, and reasons may have been forgotten (or simply prohibitions and restrictions ignored). It’s possible too that new humans came to the valley of truth or any number of things. But what happened was that someone climbed the wall, and broke the treaty. After that, or as part of that, more humans came over the wall from Shinovar and began to colonize Roshar. Were they adventurers and colonists? Were they refugees fleeing ethnic discrimination by the Shin? Were they ‘truthless’, banished from the valley? Or did they just want new lands to settle? Either way, significant populations of humans crossed the mountains and began to spread throughout Roshar, stealing the fire from the gods and opening Pandora’s box, all at once. This began the millennia long struggle between Humans and Listeners (although it may have had long stretches of peace, commingling and cooperation - see the herdazians and horneaters). Likely, it is the human/listener tensions that Odium was attracted to/fanned into the flames of war and hatred, leading to the cycle of desolations where Odium would infiltrate both sides and seed them with voidbringers. Eventually, the Listeners being more naturally susceptible to Spren bonds and having more righteous anger against the humans were suborned en masse by Odium. (Alethi and Iriali are both ethnically interesting with their hair - likely they arrived on Roshar later). Tl;dr - Stone shamanism is a memory of early humanities treaties with the Listeners, and The Girl Who Looked Up is about those treaties starting to fall apart/early human forays from the valley of Truth.

MUAHAHAHAHAHHAAHA ahaahhahaha! Hahhahahahahahhaaaaaa! Hahahahahahahaha!

Edgedancers are super empathetic and great at getting people to open up to them. Note the whole ‘listen’ thing. Thus, they are keys to people’s Hearts! One for each major race! One for humans, one for Listeners, one for Spren, and one for @The Invested Beard. (Or Aimians).

Vedel is Worldhopper confirmed. Kingkiller Chronicles is Cosmere confirmed.

The rule isn’t ‘finders keepers’ - it’s about killing the old owner; you kill a shard bearer in combat, you’ve earned his shards. That’s why one of the last times a shardbearer was taken down, he was swarmed by darkeyes and then a lighteyed archer rust an arrow through a broken section of plate. The archer got the shards, not the spearmen who were close enough to grab them. If if someone found Oathbringer, they either returned it to Ialai (and she’s sitting on it for now) or more likely they hid themselves away for a week so they could bond it in secret.

It’s well thought out and detailed - but doesn’t necessarily imply a future romantic relationship. Brandon is all about subverting tropes, and flipping expectations. I definitely see the parallels - and the possibility. But I think Sanderson is taking this somewhere else.

Ooooh, lots of juicy stuff here! We have a sketchy kandra-esque creature! We have light-theatre! Wild ryshadium! Dalinar as a junkie! Evi bring all nice and stuff! Kaladin sending a glyph! Mad abstract art! Iri as a whole siding with the enemy!?!?! A skeptical dustbringer! All of it - veeerrrryyyy interesting. The Monster: looks like a mistwraith/kandra, but possibly uglier and maybe no bones? Likely an Unmade. Possibly a corrupted Kandra? I’d say both but I doubt the timelines match up; Kandra weren’t around until a millennia post-recreance. Likely then a similar being created using a different magic system. Aimian? Corrupted Aimian!? Aimian-based evil Spren or Unmade? (Honour Spren seem to be human based - so similar but ancient and Aimian and Odious?). The Thrill: Oh Dalinar, you recovering addict you. Here we see him about to snap, ruled by the Thrill and by the Unmade. Anything for another high. But his Will starts to exert itself - he chooses to control. He chooses Control. I suspect this is where he begins to appreciate Evi - who likely feels very lost and out of place amongst these warlike Alethi. She’s much to nice. Holy Crap You Guys Why Aren’t We Talking About Iri?!?: Storming father of Storms and thunder!!! Iri is lost to the enemy? Are they allying with Odium? Or just using this as an excuse to expand their hegemony? Have they been Odiously deceived? Or are they perhaps honestly trying to help the Parshfolk??? In the meantime, Shallan desperately needs Jasnah to return. She also needs a vacation and a good shrink. Poor Shallan’s mind is unravelling. On her multiple image attack - where she sends out a bunch of ‘ghost shallans’ - this isn’t her going crazy, it’s a classic illusionist battlefield maneuver. Send out a dozen fakes to spring an ambush or confuse a foe! Reminds me of Zero from borderlands 2!

This is actually really good. Well done. Not 100% on your binding/bringing distinction, but it’s veeerrrry interesting.

Great point - we were shown shard wyndle because of the gate in Azimir.

You willl be assimilated. Because we cant hold off on this. It’s just too juicy. Also, I’m with @Varion - the serialization makes discussing and theorizing so much more fun you guys. I’d almost love to see a whole book released this way. Not a Stormlight book - that’d be brutal. But a Sanderson. Maybe Warbreaker 2

Agreed. Also, Mistborn spoilers below! Stolen access to Invested abilities comes from stealing a part of the spiritweb as in hemalurgy - this is an incredibly damaging thing. So if Nightblood can act as a pseudo hemalurgical spike? That would be interesting. But I don’t think it’s likely - as it would require damaging the host as well. I can however see Nightblood devouring Investiture itself (in this case, Stormlight) and feeding off of it.