galendo

@LerasiumMistborn: I agree with you on some things -- I think that more likely than not Dalinar is going to get killed off, probably at the end of book 5, or perhaps as soon as the end of book 4. But some of what you fear seems frankly silly -- I assure you there's practically a 0% chance that Dalinar gets murdered in his sleep or gets some pointless Game of Thrones style treatment. Because you're right -- Sanderson is predicable, at least to an extent. And that's a good thing, for those of us who like that style of writing. Rather than pick apart individual fears, let me ask you a question. Are you dead set on Dalinar ascending to Honor/Unity? Is that the only way that you will be satisfied with his arc ending? If you're totally on the Unity-or-bust train, then yeah I think that you'll end up disappointed. But let me use myself as an example. Kaladin is my favorite character. I want him to have a meaningful storyline, but I'll be fine regardless of whether that means he ascends to Honor or dies a glorious death or becomes king of Alethkar or retires to some quiet corner of Roshar to find happiness. Or something else entirely. Be open to the journey, not focused on the destination. If I were to set my heart on one particular outcome of Kaladin's storyline, then yes, there's about an 80% chance that I'll be disappointed. But if I just want a meaningful ending, there's almost a 100% chance that I'll get one. OT: I'm actually not sure that this distinction between Child of Tanavast and Child of Honor is a meaningful one. At most, I expect that if the Stormfather is making a distinction, it's a minor one. Like how the humans call him the Stormfather while the Parshendi call him the Rider of Storms. The distinction is probably not hugely story-relevant.

Nalan was definitely there, unless there is a second person with identical facial description.

I'll agree. Kaladin getting strung up in the Highstorm is probably one of my top five scenes/sequences in SA thus far. Particularly the part where Syl tries to part the winds for him. It's very touching. And Rock rushing out immediately afterwards while Teft can't bring himself to look. Great characterization all around.

So I think we can mostly all agree that if anyone's going to "pass" Kaladin in Oath progression, it's going to be Teft and not Lopen (the comic relief, who wouldn't fit well into such a serious role) or some other bridgeman without proper foreshadowing -- honestly I felt that Teft swearing his third Ideal when I had no idea he was even on his second to be rather jarring and something I'd hope not to see happen again. It's an interesting theory, but I don't see it happening for two reasons: 1) The armor-granting Oath has been super-hyped.by this point. People were anticipating it as far back as WoR and the teasing during OB is real. For narrative reasons, it almost has to be a big, awesome, plot-significant moment, and I just don't think Teft or any bridgeman other than maybe Rock has been built to nearly the required level. If one of them were suddenly promoted to one of the "main" characters for book 4, it would be possible; but such a promotion doesn't seem likely. 2) Kaladin's development. His inability to say the fourth Oath was a major plot point in OB. You can't just...brush aside his struggle by having another Windrunner beat him to it. Well, given enough setup of course you could, but so far that setup appears to be lacking. We suspect the next Ideal is hard for Windrunners in general and not just Kaladin in particular, so having someone else breeze by would be weird. The only way I could really see another Windrunner beating Kaladin to the next Ideal without major setup next book is if Kaladin explicitly rejects the Fourth Ideal -- if he decides that the Ideal is just not compatible with his own value system and that he will not swear it, resigning himself to be a third-Ideal Radiant henceforth. Then of course others would pass him, and it might be an interesting story to see Kaladin struggle to lead and/or protect those who have passed him by. But I'd be rather surprised to see the story take this direction.

To be honest, I wouldn't watch either unless -- maybe -- if it got really good reviews, since I just don't see the meat of the story adapting well to a visual medium. But I'm pretty certain that an animated series would turn out better than a live-action series of similar budget level, since one can animate spren and Stormlight and Everstorms and similar much better than any CGI/special effects could manage. Though stuff like Sadeas' warcamp and the Shattered Plains would be probably be better in live action.

My old "busted" theory was that there were going to be ten Radiant Oath progression levels, not just five (or that there were ten Oaths total, and each Order chose a subset, so that, e.g., Windrunners, Edgedancers, and Stonewards would all at some point in their progression swear to protect those who couldn't protect themselves). My idea was based around the fact that 10 was the "magic" number (ten Orders, ten Surges, ten gemstones, etc.), and I still stand by the fact that it seems really weird for there to be only five Oaths. Ten Oaths also makes a lot of narrative sense, as so far we've been burning up one Oath progression per book. Since Oath speculation accounts for probably about half of all posts on this forum, it's pretty clearly one of the main draws of SA. I'm not at all convinced that Brandon will be able to keep the excitement up for the back five without more Oath progression to be had. Will there be Voidish Oaths, maybe? A bit hard to imagine how that might work, but I suppose it's one possibility. The Stormlight Archive wouldn't be nearly as attractive without all the moral conflicts/issues brought on by the Oaths, though.

There's plenty of reasons the Fused might lie, if the process truly is reversible. Here's just a few: 1) Makes the Fused seem special. Someone in warform isn't fundamentally better than someone in mateform, just different. If the Fused are just another type of spren, then why should they be the ones in charge, rather than something like the Council of Five? 2) Less resistance from their hosts. You're assuming that the Fused was lying primarily to Venli. Isn't it also possible that he was lying primarily to Davram (or whatever his name was) and the other nearby hosts? 'Why bother to resist, you can't change anything anyway' is similar enough to Odium's argument to Moash and Dalinar that I wouldn't be surprised to see it here, too. 3) Hurting Venli. Telling her that her mate is irrevocably dead is a rather Odious thing to do. It wouldn't surprise me a bit to learn that a being so infused with Odium's Investure would prioritize causing pain over telling the truth.

To be fair, we have only the Fused's testimony for this. And he had reason to lie.

Well, there's a few things. Nothing like hard evidence, of course, and nothing that couldn't be explained in several other ways. But consider that: 1) She's an unmarried princess in a family and a culture that would strongly approve of marriage alliances. She must have a sincere and abiding objection to marriage to remain unwed for so long. (We know she's not just refusing to spite her family; she's been shown to care for her family a lot.) Despite that, she doesn't seem to have any inherent objection to the institution of marriage -- she helped arrange Shallan's and Adolin's marriage after all -- but she nevertheless sees it as a rather undesirable thing. 2) She has not evinced any interest in men romantically. Of course she could be homosexual or asexual or just not have received enough screen time, though I rather think we'd have seen hints by now if she had taken a lover any time in the past decade or so. Such aloofness is not completely indicative of an unpleasant sexual experience, but the latter would certainly explain the former. 3) She went completely overboard with those men in the alleyway. Something there struck an emotional nerve. It probably wasn't the theft -- she didn't completely fly off the handle when Shallan stole her Soulcaster -- and given how blase she is about murder, it probably wasn't the thought of murder, either. Shallan's not Jasnah, but the three things that Shallan's worried about in that scene are robbery, rape, and murder. Rule out the first and the last and the second one seems a reasonable cause. Again, nothing in the above is hard evidence, but all of the above would fit with a traumatic sexual background. As for Kadash, I'm not sure. I don't think his Devotary has been mentioned, but I tend to overlook details like that on minor characters. As far as being able to handle more dead bodies in backstories, I'll probably be recovered by the back five, at least if Eshonai and Szeth don't have any tragically dead friends or family in their flashbacks, which I'm tentatively hopeful about. Hints suggest that Lift is going to have a dead mother, though; and of course Renarin has a dead mother, and Ash and Taln almost certainly have a great many dead bodies between them (about four thousand years' worth). So although I do rather like your idea, I'm just a little cautious about any more flashback scenes that revolve around dead friends and family.

I'll give you that his public image wasn't real. No question about that. If he'd actually been the honorable man he pretended to be, he wouldn't have murdered the men who saved his life. But...you say that his public image was blown to shreds after WoR, and that just didn't happen. The only bad thing is that Dalinar asked him to resign his post as head Radiant, and chances are most Alethi thought it was a pretty silly position anyway. There is no in-book evidence, that I'm aware of, to suggest that Amaram's public approval was in any way harmed by the events of WoR. It certainly wasn't bad enough to prevent him being named Highprince Sadeas. Sorry, but this is just wrong. Dalinar's armies were known to pillage -- that's how he was able to convince that archer to join his side, by telling him Dalinar's men wouldn't pillage his town if he joined Dalinar's side. That's not the kind of threat that has any teeth if your enemy is known for mercy. True, Dalinar didn't like doing so, and perfered not to when avoidable, but that's a far cry from having an upstanding reputation. After the Rift, where Dalinar literally burned innocent civilians to death, even his own men were disgusted with him. That's what forced one of his men to become an ardent. Dalinar did not have a good reputation. There is no way that Amaram modeled his perfect lighteyes persona after Dalinar of all people. But that's my point. I totally understand why Odium wouldn't want Amaram to switch sides any earlier because of all those benefits you mention. The part that isn't obvious to me is why Odium would want Amaram to switch sides even at the battle of Thaylen City. If Amaram already belongs to Odium, why not give the Yelig-Nar stone to someone Odium could afford to lose rather than sacrifice his valuable and highly-placed mole? Seems like pretty poor strategy to me. As to Amaram being disappointed by Taln...I'm not saying it's not a kinda-sorta-plausible explanation, but it does seem something of a stretch. And that's the reason why an Amaram viewpoint would have been so vital. If we could've seen his disillusionment, then his treachery wouldn't have come completely out of left field. Instead all we can do is string together tenuous chains of maybe. Maybe Amaram became disillusioned with Taln. Maybe Odium contacted him during the Everstorm. Maybe Amaram fell prey to Odium's blandishments. Maybe he was biding his time until the Thaylen City battle. Maybe Odium had some reason to call him out. Maybe, maybe, maybe. It all hangs together like a tenuous spiderweb: possible, certainly, but seemingly ever more improbable. The cool thing is that both of these opinions can be correct. I agree that Amaram was someone who wanted, for the most part, to do the right thing. He may or may not have wanted to do the right thing for the right reasons (he's pretty selfish and wants other people to think well of him), but he did generally want to do the right thing. In fact, I see a sort-of parallel between Amaram's betrayal of Kaladin's squad and Kaladin's betrayal of Elhokar. Granted Amaram's actions are the worse of the two, but in both cases there's a sort of "for the greater good" argument that's tainted more than a little by personal motivations. Not to nitpick (okay, kind of to nitpick), but what do you think we could possibly learn about Amaram from one of Jasnah's flashbacks that would possibly have any bearing upon his present-day decisions? I mean, even if we learn that he's a self-righteous prig who kicks his axehounds -- not improbable, and arguably somewhat likely, since we know that Jasnah dislikes him for some reason -- how does that possibly have any bearing on his current decisions? Unless Jasnah's flashback sequence includes an OB-contemporaneous scene with her and Amaram, which now that I think about it might be kind of cool even if both unlikely and several books too late, I don't see how we're going to learn anything more about Amaram. I mean, we'll probably learn that he's a delusional, misguided cremling...but it's not like we don't know that already.

Gotta admit I don't watch much TV, so I can't speak to its prevalence there, but I can't think of very many books that have included rape as a major topic, or a minor topic, or really at all. The few times I have seen it done, I haven't been very impressed with how it was handled. Strangely enough, my poor experiences with rape in fiction are a major part of why I actually wouldn't mind seeing rape as a part of Jasnah's backstory. It would fit, character-wise, with what we already know, so it's not like it'd be something just shoehorned in for a cheap thrill. So far in the Stormlight Archive Brandon's already done a great job with atheism, a pretty good job with depression, and a reasonably okay job with autism, and I rather suspect that he could do a reasonably good job with rape. Like I said, I really can't think of many (any?) fiction works that have handled the topic in a proper fashion, but I actually think that SA could. I wouldn't blame Brandon for not risking it if he didn't think it could be done well, and I'd rather not see it done at all than be done poorly, but strangely enough I would like to see it done if it could be done well. Literature in general could use a sincere treatment of the topic. Then again I like this idea a fair bit, too. What happened to the ardent who gave Jasnah the book? Part of me thinks it could be the soldier-turned-ardent from Dalinar's army, but this could also be a fine possibility. The only part I don't like about the idea at present is that it would be yet another tragic backstory where people got killed, and after Kaladin (Tien, his squad), Shallan (her father, her mother), and Dalinar (Evi, all the Rifters), I'm pretty much tired of tragic backstory deaths. If Eshonai's and Szeth's backstories don't involve tragic deaths, though, then maybe I'll be ready for another one by the time Jasnah's rolls around. But right now it seems too much.

This isn't a bad idea. If Amaram's bargain with Odium predated his ascention to Highprince, at a time when Amaram's opportunities looked less favorable, then it might have made sense for him to defect. The only real issues are, first, that Amaram still seems quite pleased with himself at the end of WoR even though he already knows that Taln is completely broken. So finding out that the Heralds are mad can't really be a major influence of his decision even if he decides to take Odium's word for it, which is questionable in itself. The other issue is that if Amaram did switch sides earlier, then Odium is giving up a highly placed agent for no real purpose at the battle of Thaylen City. Odium doesn't even want Amaram as his champion. There's not much reason for Odium to break Amaram's cover. Either way, though, I think that Amaram definitely should have had a viewpoint during OB. It would have added a lot. There's a lot in this post I take some issue with. First, an opinion: I've never seen Amaram as the jealous type. I've certainly never seen anything that would suggest that he's jealous of Kaladin of all people. He's greedy, yes. Insecure, arguably. Narcissistic, most definitely (or at least, he cultivates his immaculate image relentlessly; but then again, so does Jasnah). Second, It's also worth noting that Amaram didn't set himself up as commander of the KR despite not having powers. Dalinar set him up as commander of the KR at a time when nobody had powers, as far as they knew. It's not even entirely clear that Amaram believed at that time that the old Radiants truly had magic powers, though given his membership in the Sons of Honor he probably did. Certainly neither had any knowledge of the true methods or requirements for becoming Radiant. Third, Amaram does not model his "honest general" persona after Dalinar. Amaram was doing the upstanding general thing way before Dalinar, probably when Dalinar was still a drunken wreck of a man after the Rift and before Cultivation. It's even altogether possible that Amaram actually was trying to be an upstanding brightlord. He fails first with Kaladin and then with Dalinar when his greed gets the better of him, but other than that he's been pretty much the ideal Alethi lighteyes. I think that's part of why his sudden betrayal comes so far out of left field. His previous failings were both due to greed, but his turncoat moment involves him willingly giving up all the wealth/position/power/respect that he's amassed, none of which is negligible. I dunno, it all seems pretty out of character. I might change my mind when I reach the battle of Thaylen City, but so far Amaram's always been cautious. The public declaration of treachery goes against everything he's built over the past decade or so, and what does he get out of it? Basically nothing. I might have been able to see it had Amaram been shown to be hungry for Radiant powers and somehow convinced that Odium was his only reasonable path to get there, but neither of those things seem particularly plausible.

So I'm about halfway through a reread of Oathbringer, but I've got to say that so far I see little to no evidence to suggest that Amaram has any intention or motive to switch sides. Things are looking nothing but up for Amaram. He's been named Brightlord Sadeas and given control of arguably the most powerful and influential princedom in Alethkar after Dalinar's crushing defeat at the Tower. Heck, if anything bad happens to Elhokar, who has just gone off on an idiotic rescue mission to Alethkar and hasn't been heard from since, Amaram is probably the best positioned to become the next king. Elhokar is missing, his son is missing, and so is Adolin. The only person reasonably standing between Amaram and the throne at this point is Dalinar, who is having some serious issues with the church, has a severely weakened princedom, and is making some rather unpopular decisions. Right now, it looks like all Amaram needs to do to become king of Alethkar is to wait. If he's feeling especially bold, maybe try sticking a knife in Dalinar's ribs during the next Weeping. At present, I can't think of a single good reason for him to throw that all away in joining Odium.

I'll point out that it might be premature to expect Venli to swear any Oaths. She doesn't have the usual Radiant bond with Timbre. We haven't seen her use any sort of Surgebindings. It's hard to imagine how she could summon her Shardblade if Timbre is hanging out in her gemheart. Basically, while I wouldn't be surprised if she ended up following the usual Radiant Oath progression, I also wouldn't be surprised if she didn't.

Interesting quote, and thanks for the reference; though with respect to @Pathfinder it's actually almost the opposite of what I suggested. It sounds like Brandon was thinking of having the Radiants be able to turn their element into anything, while I was imagining the reverse: being able to turn anything into their element. I can see how the former would have been too same-y. I wonder if he ever considered my version, though. Not a bad idea, but it requires the mark to be both unfamiliar with his surroundings and in a sufficiently dangerous location for such an accident to take place. Not the sort of trick you could use if the mark were at home, or at a friend's house, or at their favorite pub, or really in most locations. Now if Lightweaving could make things invisible, then you'd be onto something. But I don't think it can do that. It could also be due to the fact that the more someone uses the magic, the longer their Cognitive image can stick around. And it was very clear that Kaza had been using the magic enough for it to make some very significant changes to her. Not to mention the fact that there's a very real possibility that Odium might take a direct interest.

Lift and any Lightweaver/Elsecaller: Infinite Stormlight, limited only by the speed of her digestion.

@Pathfinder: Do you know if Brandon said why he changed the system? The original version seems a far better one to me. I get that the original system would have made it impossible for both Shallan to Soulcast the goblet into blood and Jasnah to Soulcast Shallan's blood later, but that seems a pretty minor price to pay for a much better, more balanced system. I suppose it might also have messed with Lift's character, since the Edgedances would have been the obvious Order for the Soulcast-to-food ability, which might have paired strangely with Lift's ability to convert food into Stormlight. But again these seem like minor issues when weighed against the benefits of a more consistent, more predictable, more balanced magic system.

I don't think that would work nearly as well. A lot of people could see the body going, and a whole lot of different people might see the body coming down. If it suddenly starts raining corpses, people are going to look askance at the nearest Windrunner/Skybreaker. Or stupider. It depends on your point of view. Personally, I think Soulcasting is the dumbest of the ten Radiant abilities, because it's easily the best. As a practical matter, any Soulcasting Radiant has better Adhesion than the Bondsmiths/Windrunners, better Division than the Skybreakers/Dustbringers, better Cohesion/Tension (I forget which ability's which, but come to think of it Soulcasting's probably better at both) than the Willshapers/Stonewards/Bondsmiths. They're superior at the effects of at least half the Surges, and can do at least a limited mimicry of most of the others as well (see, e.g., Jasnah mimicking Regrowth when Soulcasting Shallan's blood). Ironically, the two Surges that Soulcasting is least effective at mimicking are Transportation and Illumination -- and each of the two Soulcasting Orders gets one of those Surges as well. If I were planning the series, I'd have split Soulcasting into ten pieces and given one piece to each Order as the perk of swearing one of their Ideals. I'd also have added a time/concentration restriction so that it couldn't be a super-amazing awesome effective no-dodge one-hit KO in most combat situations. This idea of assassinating random people without trace or defense is just one of the many, many ways in which Soulcasting is stupidly overpowered and, as a result, entirely uninteresting. It's a shame, in a way. If the Elsecallers had been much more limited, they could have been used exactly like this, as the ultimate assassination Order. I'd have given them the ability to turn things into something obvious, like say crystal, so that when you find a crystal corpse in your buddy's bed or a pair of new crystal sentries standing guard, it's clear just who got to them and how. The Elsecallers could have been the stealthy assassins and the Lightweavers the sneaky spies, both without as much active combat potential but far more useful in cloak-and-dagger situations. Instead, we got the super-awesome, do-anything Orders, which is really kind of a shame.

The Silmarillion is better than the Lord of the Rings, IMHO, in large part because LotR is pretty formulaic and the Silmarillion anything but. But I have no particular desire to read an in-world Way of Kings.

My favorite now-unlikely theory was that when the spren mimicked the Honorblades, they did so too well -- just as the Heralds were drawn into Damnation when they died, so too were the dead Radiants. This secret (in conjugation with a few others) was in fact the primary secret that broke the old Knights Radiant. No one wants to be dragged off to Braize when they die.

I mostly like this theory. It's similar to what I thought was happening, but it fails to explain: 1) Why Syl's memories don't return while she's entirely in Shadesmar. Her mind should have been fully restored at that point, but it wasn't. 2) As @Brightness Jencee mentioned, when fully summoned into the Physical, the presence of the deadeyes in the Cognitive seems strange. The cognitive portion of the dead spren seem to be almost entirely destroyed, while the damage to their forms in Shadesmar seems comparatively minor. On the other hand, We do kind of have evidence of this. If I remember correctly, after Kaladin "killed" Syl, she wasn't completely dead. She obviously wasn't in great shape -- Kaladin could faintly hear her weeping, and her Physical presence seems to be entirely missing -- and the Stormfather refused to allow her to be near Kaladin ("A daughter disobeys"), but the Stormfather was straight-up lying when he claimed that she was dead. She was, at least, pretty clearly less dead that a fully dead Shardblade.

@Calderis: I don't want to hijack this thread with a "how magic works" debate (though it is an interesting debate and should probably happen), but I'm not sure whether the WoB you cited really supports your position in the way you think it does. (MIstborn trilogy spoilers) So the Shards (and those who can access large chunks of their power) clearly have some control over how easy or difficult it is for people to access the magic. They may not be able to change the fundamental nature of the ability -- accessing Investiture via Honor is always going to require an Oath. It did for the original Heralds. It (presumably) did for the original surgebinders, and it does for the Knights Radiant. But the number of Oaths required -- how easy or hard it is to access the magic -- is perhaps more flexible. As far as we know, the Heralds were only required to swear one Oath, not five. Whereas the KR require five Oaths, not one.

This is a very good point. Ultimately, the progress is up to the spren and not whatever societal structure humans wrap around it. Possible, but this seems less likely. Such a change would presumably take a long time to occur. One of the most influential books in our own world, Darwin's On the Origin of Species, took a solid hundred years to achieve widespread acceptance and evolution still has deniers today -- and this in a world where Desolations don't come every few decades and wipe society back to the Stone Age. Also, it seems a bit of a stretch to go from "people think about the responsibilities of leadership" to "spren require Oaths". It's not too much of a stretch, but there's no indication that kings and other rulers were required to swear oaths, which seems like it would be a necessary intermediate step. Do we have any evidence for this, though? The only time in the Cosmere I can think of so far where a Shard might have possibly wanted to change the way the system worked is (Mistborn trilogy spoilers) Honestly, if you're a Shard and you''ve got things set up the way you like, why on earth would you want to change the system? There's no reason for us to suppose that we would have witnessed such a change. As far as the magic systems being a natural outgrowth of the planet and the Shard, I'm not entirely sure that's true. I'll grant that you're more knowledgeable about Cosmere stuff than I am, but the way I see it, each magic system has three parts: 1) The powers that can be granted. These are the Surges of Roshar and the effects of burning metals in Mistborn. These are apparently a function of the solar system (since it seems that Ashyn was also destroyed by the same surges as Roshar), not the planet or the Shard. 2) The way in which power is stored/harnessed. These are the gemstones of Roshar and the metals of Scadrial. These appear to be a function of the planet (all magic systems on Roshar can use gemstones, that we've seen; and all magic systems on Scadrial use metals). 3) The way in which power is accessed. On Roshar, these include the Honorblades and the spren. On Scadrial these include burning metals and the mists. From what I can tell, this appears to be the part that the Shard has at least some direct control over. As far as we know, Honor chose to give the Heralds the Honorblades in exchange for their Oaths; he was not forced to do so. It does not seem beyond the bounds of reason that he (or Cultivation, if the Ideals are her thing) could have chosen to allow the surgebinders Shardblades only in return for further Oaths. As for the "single man" doing these things -- I'm not suggesting that Ishar could have made these changes against Honor and/or Cultivation's will, but that he might have been the means by which their will was made manifest. In the same way that Odium wanted the Everstorm but needed the singers to sing it into existence, Honor/Cultivation may have wanted the additional constraints of the Ideals but needed someone -- say Ishar -- to make the change happen. Though it's also possible that Ishar was just simply quite mad by then and spouting vainglorious nonsense. However, the Ideals seem enough different from the first Oath that it's also not unreasonable to suppose that they were tacked on afterward. That's an interesting question. Are the Skybreakers about adhering to a code, or are they about following the law? If the Fifth Ideal is accurate, then it's about more than just an arbitrary code. Then again, no living Skybreaker has managed to reach the Fifth Ideal (other than maybe Nalan, and we have only his word for that). So maybe their interpretation of that Ideal is incorrect.

@Calderis: You could well be right -- it does seem a lot for even a Herald Bondsmith to do -- but we know that there were issues around unrestrained use of surgebindings due to the Nohadon vision. We have the quote from the in-world Words of Radiance. We know Bondsmiths can affect Connection as a significant part of their power set; we can reasonably suppose that Honor would have approved the establishment of Oaths if they were not already present. Assuming the Stormfather isn't lying, we also know the Honorblades are capable of more than just granting surges. There's a fair bit of evidence to suggest that the imposition of additional Oaths may have occurred, and if it did then possibly the Skybreakers had a mentorship thing going on since the beginning.

Not only might it be a cultural thing (an "easy" way to help proto-Skybreakers reach the next Oath level), remember that there's at least some evidence that the original Surgebinders didn't have any Oaths to follow at all. In that case, there would have always been older Skybreakers around for newer ones to apprentice to.