psc92

Well repeatedly severing a Radiant's spine as a way to incapacitate them is a really smart tactic that I hadn't considered before, also really gruesome to think about. Now, that being said I wonder if there is some sort of protective barrier that's totally not made of lesser spren, can prevent those sorts attacks, and totally isn't going to happen in this book *cough* *cough*. But in all seriousness the fact that the fused are using that tactic now is a pretty strong indicator that Living Shardplate is happening this book.

A Highprince who used literal slave labor to run bridges for his army is one of the least Willshaper-like things that I can imagine. Also he's dead.

Yes

The way I see it the Recreance happened for these reasons: 1. Humanity's origin: The revelation that the humans are the invaders instead of the singers would have been a devastating thing for many Radiants to find out about especially since they believed that their purpose was to defend what they believed was rightfully theirs. 2. Destruction of Ashyn / Honor's Insanity: We know that at this point Honor had been dealt the death blow by Odium and was slowly dying and going insane in the process. The Radiants being told that the surges were responsible for the destruction of their previous home, and would be the destruction of Roshar as well probably scared a lot of Radiants. 3. Lack of Desolations: At the time of the Recreance there has not been a desolation in millennia. It's entirely possible that the Radiants believed that the Desolations were over, that they were no longer fit for purpose, and that by sticking around they only risked the destruction of Roshar. 4. The False Desolation and the lobotomization of the Singers: We know that the False Desolation happened around the time of the Recreance so this likely was the final nail in the coffin for many of the Radiants. Lobotomizing the Singers, whether it was intentional or an unintended side effect of imprisoning Ba-Ado-Mishram, can only be described as one of the most evil war crimes in the history of the fantasy genre. When this happened most of the Radiants probably reacted like this: I'm pretty sure that they knew that abandoning their oaths would turn their spren into Deadeyes and they did it anyway because they considered it the lesser of two evils.

I'd like to see him be an important side character in the back 5.

I've been looking for this quote for a while, I knew I read it some time ago but forgot where it was. It's from State of the Sanderson 2018. Brandon confirms that each order will have its own book by the end of the series. The most likely way for this to happen is if Ash bonds an Ashspren (It's like poetry... it rhymes). Also we know that heralds can become Radiants since Nale has joined the Skybreakers.

Ash becoming a Dustbringer is a fairly popular theory, there's not a lot of strong evidence for it other than maybe this WOB, and the fact that the book structure would be really weird if it doesn't happen.

This interlude supports the theory that shardplate isn't just Lesser spren, but it's formed by a bond between the Radiant Spren and the Lesser spren, so I'm fully on that bandwagon now.

Brandon has already done two fairly significant "fakeout" deaths in Stormlight alone and he's acknowledged that it's a dangerous trope to play around with. Jasnah was a surgebinder who was familiar with her powers which makes her very difficult to kill, so when reading WoR there was good reason to be highly skeptical about her "death". Szeth on the other hand did actually die, but was revived by Nale right after he died. Brandon was using this a way to establish the idea that people can be brought back under very specific circumstances and only if the person bringing them back knows what they are doing. There is no evidence that Tien knew he was a nascent surgebinder, and even if we assume that the cremlings that he talked to were in fact the Sleepless, then they were most likely there watching Kaladin (which we know they were doing). Tien was most likely talking to cremlings because he's been shown to be a very sensitive boy who wasn't cut out for war. The Kelsier example isn't that relevant here because he WAS dead and only managed to hang around as a cognitive shadow due to shenanigans that probably no one besides Kelsier could manage to pull off. In addition there was foreshadowing in Era 1 that he was still around and doing things. I'm sorry but I think the odds of Tien still being around are very close to 0%, there's just not much evidence in-book, and I don't see a narrative reason for Brandon to keep him around either.

Tien still being alive would be really silly and an unnecessary plot revelation, also it would retroactively diminish the impact his death had on Kaladin and as well as the scene where Kaladin meets Oroden.

Malata heavily implies that Dustbringers bond to Ashspren.

Considering how important the number 10 is in the Stormlight Archive I think it would make sense from a storytelling perspective for this to be the 10th Desolation. Certainly not proof, but it would make sense to me if it was.

As far as the "One Unmade for each Herald that broke under torture theory" I really don't buy it. We know that at least some of the Unmade have existed in previous Desolations. We saw Re-Shephir's Midnight Essence in one of Dalinar's Visions, and in the one with Nohadon he specifically mentions Yelig-nar. I think the theory that each Unmade+Champion corresponds to an order/Herald is possible, but we still lack a lot of key information at this point for me to be fully on board with this. Here's a thought I had while reading what some other people were saying in this thread. We're pretty sure that the more Odium invests in the Roshar system the harder it is for him to leave. It's implied that for him to leave he has to win a Desolation. So he probably has been trying to win a Desolation while investing the least amount possible, and with each new Desolation he would probably invest just a little bit more of his power. Now let's assume for a second that there really were 9 previous Desolations, each more deadly than the last. In what way could a Desolation be more deadly than the one before? The Unmade. What if in each new Desolation Odium created a new Unmade. And if this is indeed the 10th Desolation then we would have 9 Unmade + the Champion. I don't totally buy in to this theory either, but on the slim chance that some or all of it becomes true I want to be able to say that I called it.

I was just pointing out that some orders probably had hundreds of members in the past. I don't think we will approach that number in this time around mostly for the reasons you listed, but I would suspect that by the end of the series we will have several members of each order, perhaps even dozens of each (except of course the Bondsmiths). No real way to know at this point.

In Dalinar's vision of the Recreance he saw about three hundred Windrunners and Stonewards.

That is true. But Ruin and Preservation weren't splintered and they were just sitting right there for Sazed to take them and combine them. The question is how difficult is it to un-splinter a shard? Rayse probably understands that it's not impossible to rebuild a shard but probably incredibly difficult. And even if you knew in theory how to do it, would you have the means to do it?

In one of the most recent Oathbringer chapters the Stormfather told Dalinar that getting Odium to choose a champion, and then defeating that champion will buy humanity some time. So a lot of people in the chapter 16-18 thread have speculated that Odium's champion will be defeated in book 5. This buys humanity a reprieve which will be the time skip. Then in books 6-10 I assume will be about humanity defeating Odium himself. As for the main characters becoming heralds, I find that highly unlikely without Honor himself there make them heralds, and as we know he is dead.

I really now believe that the freed parshmen not taking stormform or some void form is completely intentional and will be used to lure humanity into a false sense of security. Human kingdoms are much more likely to negotiate with and be sympathetic toward what they view as normal parshendi rather than parshendi that have glowing red eyes and can shoot red lightning. I assume this is because Odium knows that humanity is divided and doesn't trust Dalinar, and has to be doing all he can to prevent humanity from uniting and will be going with "divide and conquer" as one of his main strategies. This seems like a very sensible way of doing that. Of course I could also be way off the mark here.

@The One Who Connects Thanks for pointing that out. I actually wasn't aware that the Liss = Chana theory had that much momentum before the WoP.

I believe the rationale for that one is that Peter confirmed that a single character has seen Chana at some point during either WoK or WoR, and that makes Liss a likely candidate just because no one else really fits.