teknopathetic

I also think Adolin is a good person. Adolin killing Sadaes was self-defense. The Kholin's had tried everything they could to take down Sadaes legally, but nothing worked. Sadaes had made promises to kill the Kholins, and in this case, your only option is to go outside the law. There really was nothing else Adolin could do. Sadeas's death-count was already so high, and it isnt moral to expect Adolin to just wait for Sadaes to eventually pull off an assassination. Hypothetical Situation: I compare it to being in a serial killer situation. Imagine a serial killer has killed many people you loved, and now the serial killer has set their eyes on you. You know who the killer is, but you cant get anyone to stop them because they are so powerful and influential politically. The serial killer is well-connected, above the law, and the police will not help you if you seek help. You have managed to avoid getting killed so far, but eventually you will die. The serial killer has just tried to kill your father and girlfriend, but luckily the attempt was thwarted. Although, many of your friends have died to this serial killer already. There are literally dozens of widowed wives and destroyed families at this point. You have tried calling for help but no one can help you. The law cannot prosecute this person. The serial killer will just keep coming. Now, one day, the serial killer is gloating to you about their plans to murder you and your family. The serial killer is not currently holding a weapon or threatening your life at that exact moment, but they are talking about how they will kill you and your family soon. This is credible, and you are not their first victim. You notice that the serial killer has let their guard down, so you attack them while they are off guard and you manage to kill them first. This would be, to me, self defense. This would be moral. This would not be giving in to emotion. This would be stopping a credible threat to your life. There is no moral law that you can only kill an active serial killer when they are already holding the knife to your throat. This to me would be "life before death". You are chosing the lives of all those the serial killer has threated. You have exhausted every other option, so you have chosen "life" for you and those who are threated. You have protected those who cannot protect themselves.

Well, is a Herald a splinter of Honour? The heralds are "spren" so to speak, and we know Ba-Ado-Mishram was different and also the most intelligent. Maybe she is smart because she actually is/was a person?

Well, we know Taln was not supposed to even be a herald. Maybe Hoid was supposed to be the 10th, but since Hoid either did not or could not become one, Taln stepped in. I actually think the person that became Ba-Ado-Mishram was supposed to become a Herald, but Hoid as the mysterious 11th candidate also would be interesting.

I wonder if there were any Baby-Kandra mistwraiths still around. Seems like that might be easy to spike.

I think this is a popular belief. Lift is just in limbo, and she was given more connection to the Cultivation shard as a beginning step (access to Life light etc). This could be true. But maybe Lift will become a Spren? They also rarely change.

Sorry- I did a ninja edit. I do not think blood is equivalent. There is no downside to donating blood. With an organ, your health outcomes are decreased and you may be unable to live your life the same way you did before. And, your chance of dying from an infection or sickness go up quite a bit. Imagine if your priest asked for organs every week by walking down the most poor areas of town, and then children were given large sums to do so. That would be ... horrid. In Canada, it is illegal to pay people for any biomaterial like blood, organs, semen/eggs, or even surrogacy because paying the poor for their body parts is seen as a breach of medical ethics. If someone gives up a piece of their body, it should not be done because the donor is financially incentivized to do so. That is basically financial extortion.

I mean, the same could be said about organs.... The religion tells the poor that it is a great honour to be used-up by the returned, and even allows children to fulfill this task. To me, the whole thing is extremely problematic. Especially when we learn that being a drab makes you less resistant to disease and may put your health at risk for the rest of your life. Add in that you are less able to feel joy or appreciate art, and ugh....

"to Lift" also means "to steal" , so this could be a nickname she got for stealing all the time.

To me Cultivation is about destroying in order to create something new, so I believe there is an end goal to everything she does. When Honour was alive maybe she was better able to reference him in her plans in terms of what the cultivation was building towards, but it kind of seems like she has taken a new path in recent times post Honour's death (by investing in 3 people and allowing radiant to be fueled by Cultivation-light). The ultimate question I have is whether or not Cultivation was a part of Honour's death; Honour's corpse-shards would make AMAZING fertilizer for her garden, so to speak. If that was part of the plan, then I am more confident in Cultivation manipulating Todium. And since Cultivation seems cool with Odium continuing on and is willing to even help Todium, it seems like she is happy with how everything has progressed. And what does she want? A merger? Does she also believe an interstellar war is coming and she wants to use Odium's army? Does she want to merge? Cultivation + Odium = Vendetta? Does she want to free Odium and send him after Scadrial? Did she kill Honour because she foresaw the comsic war and did not think they could win if Odium were destroyed? All so strange.

I would like to know if she took a piece of Taravangian like she took a piece of Dalinar. If she truly has a piece of Taravangian, she might have an advantage there. She did say having a piece of Daliar was useful, so .... And to that, if Dalinar becomes Odium's champion but Cultivation "has" a piece of him, what does that do?

SP4 is maybe Invention Reasoning: When I first saw the world I thought of the English proverb "Necessity is the mother of invention". This is a world where necessity demands people come up with ingenious tech solutions in order to survive. People have been frantically inventing things as to outrun the sun, and in order to do so, they have invented quite a few methods to make that work. The sun is providing absolutely stunning amounts of raw power, and the people of the planet need only to find ways to harness it either through tech or magitech. The world could also be viewed as a semi-closed system laboratory. There seems to be something preventing people from leaving this planet. For example, despite all the flying ship cities, it does not appear people are actively leaving the area. I mean, maybe they are, but combined with the main-cast's belief time is almost up for them, and with the Scadrian ruins under the surface, I get the impression leaving this place is quite difficult despite the high-end tech. This makes me thing of a "lab" where the subjects are unable to leave their experiment cage, so to speak. The world is quite brutal to its inhabitants, but the quest for science and invention can be quite brutal without a counterbalancing ethical principle. As for the tech from other worlds, it could either be people stumbling upon this place and being sucked-in indefinitely, or some Invention-entity reaching out and finding new materials/magics for the experimenters to play with. MERCY: My other thought is that perhaps Mercy brought some people from Threnody here since Mercy was involved in the Ambition battle and perhaps could explain how a presumably low-tech people got to this strange place before whatever went wrong in Threnody forever changed the inhabitants there.

Still so odd to me she didnt try to splinter the shard. If no one picked it up, then the whole problem would be over. It seems she really needs Odium to "do" something with her in the future.

Cultivation seems to "take" something, and seems to think having a 'piece" of Dalinar would be useful. It would be interesting to see what having a piece of Odium's vessel might mean.

Roshar is gonzo. The Stormlight series has always been about refugee population politics, and we are going to see this cycle happen once more. Shardwise, the series is about the planet dying in order to preserve "honour" and to reap and "cultivate" something new. The hidden ending in the first books is the vision Dalinar sees of Roshar being swept by a final destruction storm that ends the planet all together. Roshar has to stand in contrast to the fates of other worlds in main-line book series, so I think Dead-Roshar is what we are going too see from both a thematic point of view (the refugee stories throughout time) and a meta-narrative point of view (it has to be different than Scadrial). We also have Hoid saying he would let the world burn if he had to do it, wherein which Roshar actually being destroyed would be an amazing pay-off to his continual threats. This might also help get Spren off-world, as the world itself went kablooey. Surely there are other ways, but the destruction of the planet Spren are connected to might also work! The destruction is also foreshadowed by the Venli vision where Odium is pulling apart the planet, and Dalinar tries to hold it together with connection. What happens in terms of Karbradth and the whole "it cant be destroyed" plotline also needs to pay off eventually, and the world actually being destroyed is certainly an interesting test of that infamous deal. What happens after Roshar is obliterated? Either a return to Braize and Ashyn in order to make those worlds re-habitable on larger scales, or another migration trail along the lines of the Iriali but where different cultural/ethnic/national populations go different ways onto different worlds. Based on something else I cant talk about here, we likely know where the Iriali end up instead of Nalthis/Ashyn/Braize. If the cast does indeed leave the system altogether, then the main cast I think heads to Nalthis since we know that world is close, Nalthis has been WOBed to have a customs office, and because we have important and powerful characters from Nalthis with key connections to Dalinar and his family. I cant decide if this happens at the end of book 5 or the end of book 10, but I am going to go with the end of book 5. The time jump to book 6 is then the cast resettling on a new planet, and the Heralds and Listeners going through yet another planet resettlement + a lot of anxiety over how this all goes this time around. The thing that makes me think it might end in book 10 is that WOB saying the series end is hidden in the first 2 books, and the series end as far as I am concerned is the World-Ending Storm seen in the final vision. I also cant decide if I prefer a Braize & Ashyn resettlement with the help of the Shards, or a crazy flight to Nalthis where the Rosharians will need to renegotiate everything they know. It would be cute if a magically protected Karbrandth-Island is floated off to some new world. Maybe Braize & Ashyn would be easier to pull off narratively, but Nalthis would just be so interesting to see adjust to this.

Ba-Ado-Mishram was supposed to be a Herald, but she defected to the Singers/Odium's side (allowing Taln to take her place). The heralds seem to know her quite well, and I think this hints at a relationship prior to her unmaking. It also might make Nale's swap make a bit more sense as he is not the first herald-type person to change to the Singer side.

I really hope the villain's from Era 2 are the Iriali and some new Shard-like force from the Dor. We know Sel is very close to Scadrial, so it would be great of Sel was just expanding it's influence. I know Autonomy is everyone's favorite answer, but I hope we get Sel thrown back into the mix.

Could strong human souls go to the Barrier Storm? Could there be more truth to the Vorin afterlife than just the memory of the Heralds vs the Fused?

He also saw a weird glowing light when Jasnah was reading out The Way of Kings on the day of Gavilar's funeral. That and the childhood lights are still odd an unexplained moments. Maybe Rysn got hers from reading the words, but Dalinar got his from hearing the words. There is also a new WOB that we have seen someone else who has a Dawnshard. Shallan also so an unexplained glowing light, so maybe the Davars are an option too.

This always reminded me of the Tranquiline Halls "fight in the Afterlife" narrative. I know it looks like that myth is just about the war with the Singers and Ashyn/Braize, but it would be interesting if there actually a bit more reality to being able to fight in another realm. An army of Cognative-realm humans would be interesting.

Also a possibility as well for sure. We know the process for Herlads to have children is non-typical, so that opens the door to a lot.

Or potentially, killing him with silver prevented his secrets from being taken at death. That would actually explain why an unmade was around. Maybe it was gathering intel, but the aluminum necklace messed that up.

I was googling "what are *spern*" just in case it was a word I don't know. I am ... slow. ---- @Aspiring WriterAs for taking Spren off world: we know it is possible somehow, but people haven't found a way yet. Aluminum-boxes seem to be a possible component, or perhaps storing or faking/tapping connection may be another useful tool. We have the Aluminum-Chain seen in the Shadesmaar market, so I wonder if that is trying to give us a hint that something is possible with that. I also feel like SIlver might be an element, as we see it react quite strongly to some cognitive entities. I don't know if you have read secret history, but we do see a a cognitive entity taking shelter in a shardpool (though not a standard one) and avoiding some issues with connection because of it, so maybe that is also something that could be worked with. In my own opinion, I feel like a combination of connection medallions, aluminum, and undiscovered properties of silver will get a lot done. Silverlight, the place of learning, has got to be named "silver" for a reason, IMO. However, I assume every magic system would have a potential way of adding something to this problem. Could a divine breath be used to grant this ability to an individual Spren? What about those connection potions that at least one magic system can make? Etc Etc

Purelake Fishymancing is obviously the most powerful.

I like Shallan, and I worry that the dislike of her falls on sexism. Dalinar and Kal have a lot of similar overlap to Shallan, but they rarely get the hate. Dalinar was much MUCH worse when he was working through his demons. What has Shallan done? Told some jokes and tried to help people while developing multiple personalities? I just don't think the treatment of her has been fair by many readers.

Thanks for this!