Harrycrapper

Yea I'm going to agree with RShara on this one, the Oathpact doesn't really fix the problem even if they are able to somehow disperse the Everstorm and get the Fused back to Braize. It's just a band-aid and I feel we will get more of a resolution to the current conflict, not just another break between Desolations.

By that token, Syl couldn't be prevented from making a bond because she wasn't created by the Stormfather. Similarly, the Spren like Timbre could bond without his permission as well, but may have been prevented by Tanavast when he was alive. That could be the answer; it's not that the Stormfather is able to allow bonds to Singers where Tanavast would/could not, but that he is unable to prevent them as Tanavast did. Also, Odium threatened to take the investiture that gives one of the Fused persistent life if he didn't do as Odium wished, I don't see why Tanavast/Cultivation couldn't do similarly to a Spren that violated their orders. Although, whether they would do that is a different question than if they could do that, one I'm not sure we can answer definitively. On Eshonai, the Stormfather is traditionally how the Singers changed to their various forms, I think that's completely separate from the Nahel Bond.

I referenced the Coppermind for this one. https://coppermind.net/wiki/Summary:Words_of_Radiance#Chapter_84 It's in the third paragraph of that section. Maybe the person was paraphrasing, I recall him saying that but you could be right and I'm confusing it with Dalinar's. I recommend rereading that chapter to verify that. I would, but it would probably send me on a Stormlight bender that I do not particularly want to go on while I'm in the middle of re reading The Dresden Files.

The Stormfather very notably said "I accept these words." The Spren picks the human, but the Stormfather plays a role in accepting the Oaths. I don't know exactly what determines whether he accepts them or not, it could just be whether they line up with the respective Radiant order. But he has to accept the words, and it's possible with Tanavast being more of a sentient being, he could reject Oaths with more prejudice than the Stormfather. Also, it's worth noting that the Stormfather would not have accepted Kaladin's third Oath if Syl hadn't brow beaten him into doing it. I think he very much could have rejected the Oath if she hadn't been so passionate(haha) about it.

IIRC, Tanavast used to be the one who accepted Oaths to form Nahel bonds. It could be that Tanavast wouldn't allow the Radiant Spren to bond the Singers, but the Stormfather will.

I'm inclined to agree with you, but it is worth noting Brandon is a big fan of red herrings. I've seen enough good arguments for Dominion that I don't think we can easily conclude that Autonomy is interfering on Scadrial, though she is a leading candidate.

I said kinda similar. Spren have much longer lifespans than humans, possibly functional immortality. The tradeoff for a human in that case is that you become a machine that people use, but you gain functional immortality. Spren already have that, so they have to give up their freedom for very little or nothing in return, if that does indeed work that way. Also, I think you're forgetting the Stormlight requirements of the Oathgates, they might not have been able to use more Oathgates than they had. I could be wrong, but there should be a much larger supply of cut gemstones in Roshar in the current time period compared to pre Recreance times. There has been 4000 years of time spent building the gem supply along with population growth that enables even higher levels of gem mining/harvesting. While they lose some to Soul Casting, they're obviously acquiring them faster than they're consuming them. I imagine in the time of the Desolations they had a harder time building up the gem supply. Either way, it's also probable that the Oathgates are in some way tied to how Honor created the Dawncities. He probably created the physical form of the Oathgates but they need Spren to facilitate the use of surges and make sure other beings don't use the Oathgate without his permission. My point being, just because they use a type of Spren that there are more than 20 of doesn't mean there isn't a reason there are only 10.

Well the "Oathgate" Spren are basically stuck there in that function unless some sort of serious outside factor intervenes(ex. Sja-Anat), so it makes sense that they only made the 10 Oathgates. It's kinda similar to one of the Aethers from Aether of Night, the person(or in this case spren) basically sacrifices themselves to be a sentient machine with little freedom, so they might not have wanted to make more Oathgates than was strictly necessary. Also, it's not like the Radiants didn't have access to lots of quick transportation with Elsecallers, Willshapers, Windrunners and Skybreakers.

All swords cut both ways.

If Dilaf had a way of disrupting Raoden from channeling the Dor for his illusion, I'd bet there's a way to make a permanent Aon to disrupt any usage of the Dor in a specific area, like a jail cell.

I had thought along similar lines until I remembered the Parshendi and their red eyes in WoR. I was under the impression they were created by Adonalsium as well... The whole corrupted investiture thing does seem kinda inconsistent. I never understood why anything done with Hemalurgy didn't result in corruption or corruption indicated by red in some way. Why don't spren created by both Honor and Cultivation have red to indicate corruption? You could argue Honor and Cultivation were cooperating but where does that leave us with Hemalurgy? Preservation and Ruin definitly were not cooperating and Ruin co-opted the power of Preservation for his minions quite frequently. And lets not forget the Dor as well, a huge conglomerate of entangled investiture but red doesn't seem to be in any of the magic systems we've seen there. I think there's more to this than "Shard interfering in other Shard investiture = red."

Tyrian Sea is probably named after the ashmount of the same name(possibly different spelling, can't remember, listened to mistborn mostly on audiobook).

Yea as soon as he believed that it shouldn't be solid ground he started falling through if I remember correctly.

I seems to remember a WOB about how there were boats that people could use around the Pits. Remember, if you're in the CR with a physical body, land and water are swapped and you need something physical like a boat(or apparently in Hoid's case, a corpse) to get around.There weren't any bodies of water around the Well, so it was basically an island in the CR. I think Kelsier was able to circumvent this limitation because he was just a cognitive shadow, no physical aspect. And like RShara mentioned, the exit point of the Pits was a bit less conspicuous than the palace of TLR.

I'm going to agree with Karger on this one, SA definitely has a large variety of viewpoint characters and it just seems you're focusing on the noble ones. Also, noble characters are great tools for fantasy authors because it's plausible that they'd be at the center of a lot of important events. It's a common trope and it works well. Noble characters also have the capability of being brought low by fate only to rise again like Dalinar in OB, it makes for a more dynamic reading experience. I'd understand this argument if it was about the Song of Ice and Fire(Game of Thrones) books, where literally every viewpoint character is of noble blood or a very select few work very closely with noblemen(I can only think of one such case though I may be forgetting some). But the same argument holds there too, they're all at the center of events, it doesn't make sense to tell the story from the perspective of a solider or a servant in large doses in a series mostly about political intrigue. Stormlight is a series about a conflict that spans an entire continent on a planet with only one continent, it stands to reason that at least half the viewpoint characters would be highly placed in their respective societies for optimal storytelling.

This contradicts my earlier position, but if Trell really is an avatar of Autonomy, wouldn't controlling people in that fashion go against the Intent of Autonomy? I feel like Autonomy would have a difficult time overcoming that, similar to how Preservation couldn't control people with spikes because it went against the Intent of Preservation. Dominion would definitely be capable of doing that if I'm correct on the earlier points.

Personally, I think they're Kandra made from mistwraiths with only the unknown metal spikes that Bleeder had. If Svrakiss are a real thing, they seem like cognitive entities that would be bound to Sel similar to how Spren are bound to Roshar. I don't think they care if they leave behind more spikes, they seem to be planning on killing all sentient life on Scadrial, they might not care about being subtle anymore.

I thought about suggesting to anyone who buys it to use a text to speech program and let it run while they go to work or school. However, I remembered that there are made up words in White Sand just like every other fantasy/sci-fi book and that would probably not work as well as anyone would like. You could still try that and edit the parts it gets wrong, might cut down the time it would take to transcribe it all yourself. And I will not and will not suggest anyone that tries to transcribe it themselves distribute it as that would probably be a violation of copyright in some way and I doubt Brandon and his team would condone that.

I recommend the Graphic Audio version, it's as close to a prose version as we will get for a little while. Though, it still won't be as easy as a straightforward prose version.

I was planning on making a post that echoed most of what you said here. The Baon part definitely surprised me along with Drile's survival, so unlike Karger I feel this last one was at least somewhat worth it. I do feel like Autonomy or an avatar is steering events here, but to what end I don't really have a good guess. I had figured that they had established that Sand Mastery is genetically inherited and that the original Sand Masters had somehow found Autonomy's equivalent of Lerasium, but Baon being capable of Sand Mastery firmly quashed that theory, though there's definitely more to explore there. I do have another theory tangential to that and I was waiting for volume 3 to come out, hopefully I'll be able to put that together soon.

I'd bet he had Spook or someone else find a less than savory nobleman who survived the events of HoA.

This one is a bit different than the rest. This is an adaptation of the graphic novel technically and it does have extra stuff like the song that the suspected Hoid was playing. Whether that would have been in a normal prose version, I cannot say, but it definitely wasn't in the graphic novel. The people at Graphic Audio are either big fans or are getting detailed instructions from Dragonsteel, there are certain things like accents that they get much more accurate than a typical narrator can manage. Also, in the Stormlight ones, you can confirm the genders of the various epigraph letters from Oathbringer, the identities line up with what the community has mostly determined. Most of the extra things in the audio version compared to the graphic novel have been more in depth thoughts from characters and lengthier dialogue. The addition of the musician actually playing and singing was the only thing that was legitimately different than the graphic novel. It is kinda obvious, so maybe it's a red herring, but I'm assuming Hoid until a better candidate presents itself. Volume 2 comes out tomorrow, so I'll see if anything relevant was added in there.

So, I just listened to volume one of the Graphic Audio version and there is a bit more to the first scene that we see that guy in that I think indicates it is indeed Hoid. They use the same voice actor they use for Hoid in the Stormlight Graphic Audio books and he's singing a somewhat irreverent song which really gives you the feel of Hoid. Maybe something else will jump out when the other two volumes come out for Graphic Audio, but I feel that might have been the confirmation of Hoid in White Sand.

I still want to see a short story where TLR accidentally overshot his compounding on the first try and ended up as a baby. Suggested title: Three Inquisitors and a Baby.

There is hope, this is the first time we've come less than a week within the release date before it changes. Fingers crossed that September 18th is finally the day, but I won't be surprised if it changes between now and then.