Wrath

I like how a nice time for the Heralds is living on Roshar of all places.

Kryptonians have the ability to absorb certain types of light and turn it into superpowers. That definitely doesn't seem like a coincidence.

I think you are right on this. I am afraid to learn why WRs need so many though. And the squires flying should be easy. All Kal is doing is lashing himself in the right direction. He can do that with anything. I look forward to seeing him practice that.

I don't think it's "need." In fact I'm not convinced that it's specifically a special power of Windrunners to have more Squires than the other orders. What I think is that the two attributes of a Windrunner are Protecting and Leading, and that these lead to them forming strong bonds with larger groups than other Knights Radiant. Enhanced charisma as the supernatural skill, that is. More Squires because they lead larger groups, stronger Squires because the bonds are stronger and more power can be transferred.

It turns out that the whole point of the Highstorms is to rearrange the geography of Roshar into a planet-sized Aon.

Well no humans are native to Roshar.

The last scene with Sadeas in the book I thought was rather odd.

 

Sadeas's indicated intention to start a campaign of lies about what has happened seemed remarkably amateurish.  Given the circumstances and the Everstorm any such lies would be seen as blatantly false in short order and only undermine his position.  To me it felt more like determined denial rather then a real understanding of the situation.  When he stated his intention to take Dalinar's discoveries, including Urithru, I felt contempt not anger.   Not because of his slimy evilness so much as his blatant cluelessness.  Seriously Sadeas's?  You want to claim a city that can only practicably be accessed by a Radiant in the first place?   This scene dropped Sadeas from fairly clever mid-level villain to clueless caricature in my eyes.  Though thinking back he had been kind of sinking to that position for most of the book.

 

Adolin did Roshare and the readers a favor.

I think that's deliberate. Sadeas lost, and he lost big. In fact he didn't just lose the game, he turned out to not even be playing the same game as Dalinar. He didn't have the dignity to give in, so he had to force himself to espouse what he knew were lies. I felt sorry for him, to be honest.

Don't have the quote to hand, but one I like is Teft in TWoK when he sees Kaladin fight at the end of the book and says that Stormlight doesn't grant abilities but perfects them. Kaladin, an excellent fighter, becomes a force of nature. So anyone's special physical skills will become exceptional. The example I used in a different thread was Rock's stew archery becoming amazing.

Syl left when he was fighting the Parshendi, which suggests that he might have crossed some sort of Windrunner line from protecting to unnecessary killing, but I don't know..

Fair enough. I suspected Szeth discovered something about the return of the Voidbringers, but it was not a very strong suspicion.

Also a possibility. My reasoning above is based on things we know, but it's easy to forget that there are lots of things we still don't know that could also explain it. Unmade and Ten Deaths and all sorts.

What makes you think that Szeth has met a Herald?

Well Szeth was declared a Truthless for an unknown reason, but when he encounters Kaladin he begins to believe that he didn't deserve that punishment. He couldn't be Truthless for being a Surgebinder because his Windrunner powers came from the Honourblade, so either he took the Honourblade or he somehow learnt that a Desolation was coming.

Assuming that he didn't just take the Honourblade (which I'm not ruling out, but it seems like the less interesting option) or that taking an Honourblade doesn't work, as per the WoB that says you can only be given one, then the question becomes the source of the Desolation prediction, and the number of sources for that information is pretty limited. A god, a worldhopper or a Herald, pretty much. And who better than a Herald to give a warning about the True Desolation?

Besides, in the prologue we have two people arguing about Szeth who are most likely Heralds, saying that they did something to him. Which might rule out it being Jezrien but it does suggest that Szeth has crossed paths with Heralds in the past.

He already thought Syl was dead though. He didn't like Elhokar, thought he was a bad king, but believed at the very least that he was trying to be better. That was what he told Moash, that Elhokar tried. In that moment, he knew that protecting Elhokar was the right thing to do. It wasn't about getting his spren back, because she was long gone as far as he knew.

This exactly. Kaladin went to protect Elhokar knowing that he would most likely die. He had no thoughts of rewards of any sort.

They almost certainly each saved themselves, but since neither thought that the other was a Surgebinder at the time they both came to the (reasonable) conclusion that they must have saved the other as well.

Kaladin likely took longer to recover because he only had a tiny bit of Stormlight compared to Shallan.

Theory I just came up with now: Jezrien gave his Honourblade to Szeth and warned him that a Desolation was coming. There's a WoB about how you can't bond an Honourblade, just be given one, and yet Szeth was bonded to his by every definition we have. And Szeth believing that he has met a Herald and been given a warning sounds like a good reason for the stone shamans to (falsely) declare him Truthless.

Sadeas's wife seems like a bad influence, too.

I just thought that Dalinar was, you know, wrong about him.

Maybe the Thrill was just an Unmade's hobby while killing time waiting for the next Desolation.

Perhaps the lines have to do with how the Orders interacted with each other? After all we know that disputes between Orders happened, but we don't know how they were actually resolved. The opposite Orders could have had some sort of right of judgement. Almost certainly not the case, but who knows?

Garnets can be maroon or purple in our own world too - I actually own one. Garnets can be green, orange, or yellow as well, though a deep red is the most common hue. I think there would be a similar spread of garnet colors on Roshar - it doesn't necessarily mess with the idea that deep red is the color most associated with the stone and hence the Lightweavers.

That's interesting. On Roshar even very slight differences in the composition of gems can result in them having vastly different powers - such as between sapphires and rubies. That makes me think that their garnets only come in the one shade.

If he didn't have a soul, I think he'd be rather dead.

I don't see why that has to be the case. And it seems like being soulless would be a big advantage for a wielder of Nightblood.

Technically a Twinawesome would be someone who can metabolise food into two different types of Investiture.

Regrowth was able to heal Szeth from a Shardblade hit to the spine after falling for hundreds of feet. Feruchemical gold works under the same principles, so if TLR is fast enough to heal before it reaches the brain, he's completely fine. Hit him in the head, however, and even he's dead.

You might be right, but Szeth was healed by an external force rather than an internal one. And dying that way specifically cut off his spiritual connection to his Honourblade, and might mean that he doesn't even have a soul any more for all we know.

I like the idea that the boon and curse vary depending on the selfishness of the request. It actually makes sense when you consider that the Nightwatcher is a spren and some spren care a lot about a person's intent.

If we assume for a second that this is true, then it raises questions about how selfless Taravangian's request was. After all he wished for the capacity to save the world, not that the world be saved, which could mean that him being the one to save the world was more important than the world actually being saved.

Perhaps Lift's request was completely selfless, which is why the Nightwatcher showed her such favour. That would make sense too, given how she goes back to use Regrowth on Gawx even though she's running for her life.

Definitely Hoid/Wit. After all Sigzil recognised him from the description.

This is one I shall keep in mind for now. Your evidence seems sound to me, based on the limited information we have at this point. Also, we know that something is up with Taln. Brandon for all intents and purposes told us that the "Taln" in the books right now is not the real one. If he was murdered, then it is quite possible that something went wrong. He would view what the other Heralds' have done differently, and could even decide to hide or not return as expected because of it. I will keep this theory in mind.

Perhaps the Oathpact would really have held properly if Taln had died the way he was supposed to?

Seems extremely plausible.

Perhaps this is even related to why they're apparently being corrupted. Not just forsaking their duty but actually betraying one of their own.