Shlee

4 hours ago, DracostarA said:

I think here is where this particular Death Rattle comes into play. 

Not sure if a baby counts as a willing champion, but if it is agreed to be a contest 'to the death' then if Dalinar fails to kill it, does it mean he forfeits? 

That's particularly horrifying after seeing how revengeful Gavinor is. If Taravangian can choose the boy, I don't see Dalinar willingly killing him, and this death rattle becomes horrifying. Same if he can somehow choose Kaladins little brother. Team Dalinar seems to be thinking in terms of having to defeat someone spectacular, rather than team odium somehow winding up manipulating themselves into a champion that they don't want to kill.

I'm an idiot, I'd completely forgotten that Timbre also doesn't speak. Still, I'm very curious what the mechanics of this would be, as there doesn't seem to be any reason for them NOT to speak. It would make more sense to me if say, ALL Willshaper spren were nonverbal (which, maybe they are, but that's clearly not the case for honorspren). Just one of those little things that seems out of place to me and I'm sure there's a reason for it and I want to know what it is!

Something else I don't think I've seen mentioned that this book confirmed for me and that I'd really like an answer to after noticing it in Oathbringer. (Please point me in the direction of a WOB if one exists) - Why is Rua nonverbal? No other Radiant spren that we've seen is completely nonverbal, even ones in early stages of bonding.  Clearly Lopen can "interpret" or understand what he's "saying" anyway, but we don't have any direct quotes or speech from him. 

I'm frequently out of internet access for long periods of time due to my job so I actually have my own one of these (and my own WOB database for that matter haha). I'm very excited to be able to compare this one with mine over the next few weeks as I'm sure the collective knowledge here has caught many things that I probably missed. So much awesome!

2 minutes ago, emailanimal said:

Now, where I do not agree, is I do not see the need for Oathpact without the presence of an outside threat.  The thing is, what Brandon is saying is that the Oathpact was an agreement between the Heralds and Honor. Odium was NOT a party to THAT particular agreement. But I still think that the agreement was a reaction to Odium's coming.

Haha, I disagree with your disagreement. Because I agree that the Oathpact needed some sort of outside threat. I just am of the opinion that none of the humans are actually native to Roshar, and that sort of mass migration/exodus is usually spurred by something terrible. At the risk of a slight topic hijack here, we know that Roshar is unusually Cosmere aware compared to other places we've seen and I think that's because the Heralds (and their peoples) were worldhoppers fleeing some sort of destruction/cataclysm. Possibly from Ashyn, possibly from elsewhere, possibly Roshar was just the "place to go" if you were a Cosmere refugee.  Brandon has repeatedly RAFO'd where the Heralds are from, where they were born, and if they're native to Roshar. Now, if they weren't, then they had to have had at least some cosmere knowledge, and I'd say quite a lot if we managed to wind up with a lot of other things not native to Roshar, like "chickens", horses, pigs, etc.  That bespeaks bringing a whole LOT of stuff over with them. It makes sense to me that a Cosmere-aware group, fleeing a disaster, would request of the shards of their new home some way or power to protect themselves in the future. I guess I see the Heralds as somewhat analogous to the Night's Watch. They were just out there, watching for threats that the rest of the world has forgotten even existed. Whether or not that was Odium or other things is open for interpretation, but regardless, I can see the Oathpact being formed before he actually arrived. It's certainly also possible it was a reaction, but I don't think it necessarily has to be, based on the available info. 

I think people often forget that the original Oathpact did not include Odium, and that his becoming trapped by it doesn't appear to be part of the original design.

Quote

QUESTION ()

How many parties were there to the original Oathpact?

BRANDON SANDERSON

The Heralds and Honor. They thought that by walking away from their oaths, that it would break the Oathpact. They're going to find out that it's not quite as broken as they had previously thought (meaning the Heralds).

QUESTION

Is the fact that Odium can't leave Roshar a direct result of the Oathpact, or something else?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Not a direct result of the Oathpact, but the Oathpact was part of it.

My take:

So I see it more as Honor and Cultivation came to Roshar. Heralds/Honor have Oathpact (I personally see this as these ten people being the leaders of various groups of "refugees" that migrated to Roshar, and requesting a way to protect their people from future threats. but this is just my personal headcanon, not substantiated in any way.) Jezrien says "We took up this burden willingly" so they obviously weren't forced into it, regardless. Odium later arrives and unaware of the Heralds/Oathpact tries to splinter Honor/Cultivation like he did Dominion/Devotion and it failed because Honor already has champions and it seems that invested people can affect the world in some ways more than actual shards, which seem to have limits on their power and how it can be used.  Honor/Cultivation start teaming up to try to resist and Odium starts going after the Heralds/Champions.   It'd be useful to get timeline on which came first: The Oathpact or Odium's arrival. Has anyone ever asked this?

I think Odium knew that creating his own champion would invest him in the system too much to leave, so instead he tries a roundabout way that winds up with the heralds being tortured off-planet somehow, but it fails from his perspective and he winds up too invested in the system to leave after all. This turns the Oathpact into basically permanent torture hell for the Heralds and Odium starts causing Desolations, using voidspren and Unmade (He's already invested at this point, so in for a penny, in for a pound) which also happen to threaten the spren who attempt to recreate what Honor gave the Heralds to protect themselves and we get Knights Radiant. Heralds blame Honor for getting them stuck in a hell they can't get out of and a war they can't seem to win (they note in the WoK prologue that the enemy is growing stronger, not weaker, which I see as Odium investing more and more into "winning"). 

30 minutes ago, HavoKinetic said:

I mean, we don't really know if the canon 17th are good guys...

Hi everyone. I started posting super minor theories without introducing myself. Improper, as ever. I am father of many, mover of entropy, and so HavoKinetic. Hav for short, if you like. Big fan of Sanderson, Rothfuss, Lynch, Martin, and Abraham. Happy to be aboard.

Welcome! As to that, I'm not sure what that says about what Brandon thinks of us since.....

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"Our site is named 17th Shard, well, because Brandon told us to. It's named after a group of people who jump between worlds in Brandon's adult novels." 

Perhaps it's just because we're all looking for Hoid. Or we're all cluelessly bumbling around, accidentally doing things like introducing plagues 

For some reason, I always assumed Reya's Tear was either Ashyn or Braize. I guess because using our world as an example - you can see other stars, but the abnormally "bright" ones are typically planets within our own system. I can't think of any planet outside our system that's visible off the top my head.

Would also explain why only Roshar seems to mention it.

1 hour ago, Quiver said:

I don't know if it was intentional,but I cannot look at Kaladin and not make the connection to Paladin.

INTERVIEW: Jan 24th, 2015

QUESTION

BRANDON SANDERSON

TAGS

You're not the only one! 

I feel like this thread needs a mirror thread of Sanderfan fails.

Like me, not at least finding out if the Barnes and Noble guy who sold me Arcanum Unbounded (after fetching it from the back for me) and then talked my ear off about Oathbringer and the Kingkiller Chronicles, was a 17 sharder. Fail.

23 hours ago, VirtuousTraveller said:

It just seems so odd for the spren to have involved themselves at all.  Why did they care what Honor was doing with the Heralds?  We're talking about 10 individuals on a planet filled with a rich and diverse ecosystem - why "mimic" this Honorblade-Herald model?  What motivation would they have to do this?  Curiosity?  Humor?  Child-like innocence?

It seems that the spren pulled mankind (and likely the Listeners) into a war that didn't involve them in the first place.  Honor and Odium were the main players.  Why bring people into it?

I don't find their involvement odd at all. We know that at least one of what we think is an Unmade, Sja-Anat can do something weird to spren, from one of Dalinar's visions. It's entirely possible that the Desolations are just as dangerous to the spren as to the humans. So working together makes sense, if both of your "species" are being threatened by an outside foe:

Quote

“Fine,” Dalinar said. “Just worried. I mean, I don’t even really know what we’re looking for.”
“A spren that doesn’t act like it should,” the man said. “Keep your eyes open. Once Sja-anat touches a spren, it acts strange. Call attention to anything you see.”

3 hours ago, FiveLate said:

I'm new and just made an account, but did Taravangian state that the death rattles started then or that there had been a large up tic in them and they had become aware of them?   Brandon is usually very careful on his wording, he says they started at same time.....not when that time is....

Welcome! Hope you enjoy it here!  Yes he certainly is careful with his wording which is why I'm curious since some of the information we have now is contradictory. When that's happened before, it's often meant that something we thought we knew from in-world was wrong, but it's also possible that that one WOB is outdated and Brandon has changed something since then, as @Spoolofwhool suggested. 

Here is the quote from Way of Kings - it's in the chapter where Szeth goes to kill Taravangian and finds out that he's the one who's actually ordered the murders:

Quote

“We do not know why some speak when others do not,” Taravangian said. “But the dying see something. It began seven years ago, about the time when King Gavilar was investigating the Shattered Plains for the first time.” His eyes grew distant. “It is coming, and these people see it. On that bridge between life and the endless ocean of death, they view something. Their words might save us.”

So the only source we have for when the death rattles started is that sentence. I can't find any WOBs or anything else in the books to corroborate it (except that one a few posts up where Brandon says that they started at around the same time). Taravangian obviously believes it's true.   

I started looking more into this after this conversation and there are some mentions in the books about "the strange things men have started saying when they die" and other such oblique references, all of which implying that the Death Rattles are a more-or-less recent phenomena and people are noticing the oddity. Not so for the Thrill. I can't find a single mention of someone thinking it odd or out of place.

Oh I wasn't serious and I think z was being more or less facetious and just saying we really don't have a solid answer.  But the concept would be amusing. Even if it just turns out to be something completely unrelated to what we've all thought for so long. Brandon's books are so well foreshadowed that that rarely happens completely. Especially since somebody's almost guaranteed to have at least gone out on the crazy limb and called even the most unlikely of options. The mass brain explosion of the forums would amuse me to no end if it ever happened though..

23 hours ago, Spoolofwhool said:

Good point about the Thrill, and it's definitely weird, but there's a WoB which apparently implies that states that both the Thrill and Death Rattles started at around the same time, and according to Taravangian, the Death Rattles started around the time when Gavilar started exploring the Shattered Plains. The WoB is from 2 years ago so it's entirely possible that Brandon has revised it. Maybe I should see if there are any more signing events and ask if someone can drop that question if possible.

That'd be an interesting question.....I'd also be inclined to be curious as to whether or not Taravangian is correct here. Them starting at the same time doesn't really prove anything to me about when that time actually was....the part about it being at the same time as Gavilar exploring the plains is from an in-world source, and Chana knows we've seen those be wrong/misleading before!! Either way, something doesn't quite add up with the information we have currently.

@Zmann966 - Oh my haha I just had a vision of how many heads would explode after almost seven years of theorizing about Heralds and Knights if it turned out that the Desolations were just simply on a refill clock and that clock somehow got disrupted with the abandoning of the Oathpact!!  Tinfoil hat! Once the Heralds return to Braize, it triggers the refill, and after 500 years the Desolations return. If only one returns and 9 are missing, it takes nine times as long which is why we haven't had one in 4500 years!!! (haha this math is wonky and I'm a crazy person, but whatever, I'm entertained.)

To be fair, that's also a really vague question. I read this one as minor spren CAN bond, but the result isn't the same as a Nahel bond that grants surges:

Quote

INTERVIEW: Mar 24th, 2014

Fantasy Faction Interview: Brandon Sanderson Stormlight Interview (Verbatim)

QUESTION

Could any type of spren bond with a person (even if the results wouldn't be a Knight Radiant)? Or only the ones associated with a branch of the Knights?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Ooh, that's an excellent question. This is something theoretically possible for a lesser spren to achieve.

Soooooo no, you probably couldn't with a flamespren, a lifespren, a windspren, or an awespren, but with an Honorspren, or a Cultivationspren, Highspren or an Inkspren, why not?

I'm with Argent on this one, I've been lurking around here since the site began and always thought it.....strange.....

Amusingly enough though, this showed up on my Facebook today and I couldn't resist:

I'm not personally on board with the theory that the Unmade have only recently returned to Roshar. We theoretically know, if Taravangian is correct, that one of them causes the Thrill. If the Thrill were as new as 6-7 yrs ago, I'm convinced someone would have mentioned it. These people who have been doing battle basically their entire lives would certainly notice a weird force driving them to bloodlust if it came out of nowhere. Instead, they act as though it's natural, normal. And Sadeas hints of feeling it in his youth, Adolin speaks about training himself to resist it (and not recently), and 

Dalinar Flashback spoilers:

So either he's wrong, and the Thrill isn't caused by an Unmade, or something else besides the popular "everything came back at once 6 or 7 years ago" is going on. I'm inclined to take Taravangian's comment about Moelach "slumbering" to mean that the Unmade don't necessarily leave Roshar, but that they can be either dormant or active somehow. Or are in some way limited in their manifestation on Roshar, but in a different way than the voidspren seem to be. Pure speculation, regardless.

As for Odium using his powers to move them....possible, but he must be bound by something somehow, or why not just have them there all the time? 

The bigger question, I would think, in the wake of that signing audio (which was fantastic of you guys to get by the way!) is how are Odium's spren leaving Braize, since it sounded like the Nahel-bonded spren, at the very least, are tied to Roshar in the Cognitive. So something has to be bypassing that mechanism, since we also know from Nale's comments in Edgedancer that the voidspren aren't really native to Roshar (he references pockets of them being left behind, and how they can't possibly be new ones coming over). Which makes the question of where Venli got all those blasted stormspren in the first place pop back up to pester me yet again.....

@kari-no-sugata - you make some valid points, but I can't see distance as being a major factor simply because we what we know about world hopping doesn't really seem to imply that at all - we've heard nothing about it being easier to cross from one planet to another if they're closer (at least not that I'm aware of). Instead, it seems to have much more to do with things like amount of Investiture in a given place, the presence of shardpools, and the status of the cognitive realm in that place. I would hazard a guess that inter-solar system hopping functions similarly to intra-solar system hopping in the absence of space flight.

I also think that that whirlpool in the Uvara myth is involved. There's a WOB somewhere that some parts of that story are more than just myth, and I've been wondering about it for a long, long time. I think it interesting that "the Origin" is so involved in the mythos of the planet, seemingly in ALL of the cultures, including the maps, and I can easily see it being a conduit or something where the storms can pull more Investiture out as they pass by (or something haha). That potentially makes the Everstorm more devastating, if it's invested with a voidish version of stormlight and also has the capability of using the Origin to recharge. I guess I think of the Origin as a lot like 

Mistborn:

Of course then there's all that new info about Honor's perpendicularity being mobile so that may blow that completely out of the water. The obvious follow-up to that tidbit, is if the storm is a mobile perpendicularity (I know that part didn't get confirmed) does that mean that the Everstorm functions the same way? Scary thought that, mobile conduit to Odium!

Edit:

Ha, totally missed that this is basically exactly what zmann said above me. My bad. But yeah, that storm has definitely got to have some things going on we haven't seen yet. I'm also fond of the it's-invested-with-Voidlight-instead-of-Stormlight theory, but we don't even know if Voidbinding works like that yet...

This comes up now and again. For what it's worth, here's a "heresay" account of what it's theoretically supposed to be:

Quote

Micheal Whelan stated (at JordanCon 2013) that the characters were Dalinar (closer) saluting Kaladin. Freelancer@58 is correct that the scene is not textual to the story.

Whether or not this person actually knows what they were talking about, I can't vouch for, as it wasn't me and I wasn't there

There's also this:

Quote

INTERVIEW: Mar 19th, 2014

WoR Signing Report - darkanimereal1 and luke (Verbatim)

QUESTION ()

What caused a Desolation to end? Was it just the defeat of Odium's forces? Because the Desolations start when the Heralds break under torture.

BRANDON SANDERSON

Because the Heralds can no longer be in existence. There is a certain period of time that they can be there, and after that, if they're there, they will start a new one. So the Heralds do need to leave for a Desolation to end.

QUESTION

Oh. So they've got a time limit.

BRANDON SANDERSON

They do. Otherwise the Desolation will start again. What they discovered is not all of them have to. As long as one remains, the Desolation will not start again.

QUESTION

So, by the nine leaving, did that actually break the Oathpact for them? Did it change the cycle of Desolations?

BRANDON SANDERSON

They have not completely broken the Oathpact, despite what they may think.

If they all remain - a desolation starts again. This seems to say with certainty that all the Heralds being on Roshar triggers a Desolation after a certain time period. As to what makes them reappear on Roshar in the first place, that part can probably still be debated, but breaking under torture seems to be the commonly accepted theory. (I don't think this WOB actually confirms that one, since it just ignores that particular statement.)

The part that I cannot figure out is why Nale seems to think that Surgebinding can cause one, as being a herald, he should know more than most. I'm inclined to lean toward it (And also Ishar's "lies") being a direct result of their insanity.  We also now know that Heralds are essentially Investiture, more or less cognitive shadows. (Which begs the question of how can they go mad?? Outside influence causing corruption?) My personal theory after this:

Quote

QUESTION

Is Nalan using his original Honorblade, or did he bond a spren?

BRANDON SANDERSON

He's using his original Honorblade. But there's an asterisk here that will come up in Oathbringer

is that the asterisk is that the Heralds broke the bonds with their blades when they left them, and that left cracks in them that are either making them insane by not being filled, or got filled with something less savory. Nalan taking his blade back (especially since we have no idea WHEN that occurred) doesn't necessarily mean that he still has the same type of bond with it that he once did.

Quote

INTERVIEW: Dec 3rd, 2016

Little City Books-AU Tour (Paraphrased)

CCQ

Did Ishar intentionally deceive Nalan or does Ishar have bad info that he passed on?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Yes and no. All of the heralds are insane.

CCQ

So I clarified the question to being did Ishar know that he was lying to Nalan

BRANDON SANDERSON

got a RAFO but he added something that seemed to mean that Ishar could perhaps see the future and that each insanity was unique and that uniqueness played a part in the info. Not really sure on the last part.

Has anyone ever asked if the Knights Radiant pre-Recreance were aware that the Heralds had attempted to give up the Oathpact? I've never even seen that question RAFO'd I don't think. I know we have WOB that they didn't abandon their oaths as a direct result of what the Heralds did.  If they did know, I could see the Radiants attempting to replace the Heralds and then finding out that the Heralds were causing the desolations by being on Roshar. I think what Nalan and Ishar are referring to is that if a Radiant could gain enough Investiture to basically count as a Herald (which we know from some very recent WOB that I don't have sources for, are basically cognitive shadows which in turn, as I understand it, are mostly Investiture) that it might trigger a desolation. 

Quote

Then men will naturally discover the greater power of the oaths. Without Honor to regulate this, there is a small chance that what comes next will allow the Voidbringers to again make the jump between worlds. That would cause a Desolation.

Perhaps there is a threshold on how much Investiture Roshar can have and the Oaths make it possible to access or concentrate enough of it without Honor around to restrict it and that either causes some kind of realm combining like a perpendicularity that allows Odium access to the planet. Shallan also "pushes" stormlight into Pattern at one point.....maybe it's possible to make a new honorblade with your spren, a la nightblood style, by shoving investiture into it?  If Odium is seeking a way around the Oathpact, maybe it's constructed in such a way that if someone gains enough Investiture to "equal" a Herald, it would count. Seems plausible, and even more so from a madman's perspective, especially since they obviously are unclear on how it even works. We know that the Desolation has started regardless, but I can see how perhaps Ishar and/or Nalan made that jump in reasoning.

Tinfoil hat: The Recreance was caused by a group of Radiants attempting to become Heralds - the thing of great eminence that required the Skybreakers' help in sorting innocent from guilty, and after dealing with the miscreants, the rest of the Radiants decided it was too much a danger to the planet to keep existing, except the silly Skybreakers who insisted that Honor had given them a mandate that they MUST follow at all costs......

I shouldn't have listened to that darn signing report tonight, now my brain is running in circles!!

1 hour ago, maxal said:

Does it really confirms him? Does anyone have second thought on it? I'll admit Stump as Truthwatcher just doesn't sit well with me.... Anyone got better explanations or deep insight?

Well, assuming this is completely verbatim:

Quote

4. Do Ym, Stump belong to Edgedancer? Will we see Stump again in the future?
A. Ym is not an Edgedancer. You will see Stump in the future novels though you may not see Tashikki much again.

My thoughts. A) Ym is dead, so technically, not anything, Edgedancer or otherwise. I'd have felt better if he'd said "was not" an Edgedancer. 

B ) He also didn't confirm or deny that Stump was an Edgedancer, and while I'm as confident as I can be that Ym and Stump had the same kind of spren, it's not impossible that they are from different orders. For what it's worth, she does tell Lift "Not like a vine" which seems to lend itself to her having something other than a cultivationspren.  

C) I guess it depends on how much you believe Brandon likes to troll with things like tenses of words haha. 

Theoryland annoys me so much that over the past six years, I've literally transferred the entire contents to a OneNote notebook and deleted all of the WoT stuff out of it. Much easier searching on my end. But not everyone's as crazy as me   To answer your question - no. There's no way to separate the two as they're entered into a singular database. Eventually you get better at searching...and hopefully eventually we will have our own database. 

On 11/22/2016 at 1:14 AM, Chaos said:

Okay, it's time. I'm going to put this in spoiler tags just in case. 

I assume this is about the Sleepless.

 

  Hide contents

Weiry figured out the race (and I'll let him explain, so he gets those upvotes) but I'll start with saying that what I noticed immediately was that the way he talks is the same as the way the back covers on Way of Kings and Words of Radiance.

The Sleepless are the ones who wrote those. 

"We watch the others. The assassin. The surgeon. The liar. The highprince." 

It's exactly the same.

This is crazy important. I remember at the Words of Radiance release I asked Brandon to sign in my book who wrote the back covers. Brandon does like to please fans, and he looked physically pained by the question. He wanted to answer but he said that he could not. It was that important.

These guys? These guys are super important.

Ian figured out the race of these guys very easily, which I had missed, but 100% the Sleepless wrote those back covers. It's awesome and terrifying we see them now.

 

While I definitely agree that the wording is VERY similar, this has been bugging me since I first read it and today I finally hit on why while referencing something totally unrelated. From the back of TWoK:

Quote

The world can change. Surgebinding and Shardwielding can return; the magics of ancient days can become ours again. These four people are key.

One of them may redeem us. One of them will destroy us.

Emphasis mine. If this was indeed written by an Aimian.....What magics do the Aimians not have currently that they used to possess? It can be argued that this refers to Surgebinding and Shardwielding, but why not just leave the sentence there? Even if it does refer to that, does that mean that the Aimians used to possess those capabilities as well? We've not seen or heard of anything to do with Aimians binding spren that I'm aware of, although I've seen that theory before, without much substantiation.  Fabrials? Did they have something to do with the larkin, since we know those seem to have come from Aimia?

Also, this makes me read "One of them may redeem us. One of them will destroy us." in an entirely different light than I ever have before. I always read it as redeeming the Knights Radiant. Perhaps it still is and the Aimians were involved with them (I know Arco says "ally").  Or perhaps it means redeeming the Aimians in the eyes of the general populace of Roshar? (Not sure what caused the scourge, except that it seems to have been more recent than most other things we know nothing about haha). 

Why do the answers to anything always leave me with more questions?!

12 hours ago, Stark said:

What really caught my eye on the Rosharan essay may be a minor thing, but after SH and BoM, the offhand mention that Roshar is the name of the main continent on the planet is what has me most inquisitive.

 

Can't give the exact quote right away, but to me it certainly implied that there is another continent somewhere on Roshar that we know nothing about other than it is there.

12 hours ago, Mason Wheeler said:

It may or may not be where those crazy perfectionists from Hoid's story live, if they're real.

I do seem to recall a WoB saying that Roshar only has one continent, though.  Can anyone verify that?

Well....define "continent":

Relevant WOB: 

Quote

FIREARCADIA
Does the world map in the Way of Kings show all of the landmasses of Roshar? Does that make the continent on Roshar a Pangaea-like supercontinent? And as I think about it, are there tectonic plates on Roshar?
BRANDON SANDERSON
It is a supercontinent. I won't say there is NOTHING out there, but (unlike Scadrial) there is not another full continent. Plate tectonics are not a factor on the supercontinent.

Quote

MACEN
Are there any other continents on Roshar?
BRANDON SANDERSON
I haven't said if there's anything else out there, but I have said that it's a pangaea. Meaning if there's anything else out there, they are small. They are not of a similar scope in size. Now on Scadrial, there's other stuff going on. And I've told people that for years and years and years. So you may find some other stuff going on there. So the southern continent was populated on Scadrial, during the Final Empire era even. It was just impossible to reach because of the heat. The poles were the only habitable places on the planet. So anything in between just cooked. Final Empire was on the North Pole.

So as usual, room for interpretation. 

We do know they have a color. I don't know for sure that it's based on gemstone, although I think most of us consider that highly likely and operate mostly under that assumption. We do have this WoB:

Quote

ARGENT
Will a Surgebinder's eye color change when they Surgebind or have a Blade... Is the color of their eyes corresponding to their Order? So Windrunners would do blue, and...
BRANDON SANDERSON
Yes.
ARGENT
So each Order does a different eye color?
BRANDON SANDERSON
Each Order does indeed get a different eye color.

As for abilities, I've never seen anything 100% about them being based on or tied to those essences, but we do have this:

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ALA: In addition to the two abilities given by each surge, does a Knight Radiant order have a third blended ability, the interaction of its two given surges?

BWS: Not specifically as phrased there, but each order has quirks that are unique to it. They are magical quirks, but it’s not necessarily a blend of the powers.

Neither of those answers your exact question, but that's as good as I've got