galendo

4 hours ago, Wreith said:

I don't understand. You say he needed someone to transform the Parshmen and then you say he could have done that before just like he did now. I'm missing something in your statement...
It's not about "conning" anyone. it's about the last legion, aka, the parshendi of the shattered plains, being the only Listeners capable of voluntarily forming bonds at all.

I'm saying there's two groups of people Odium needs: Parshendi to bring the Everstorm, and Parsendi to house the Fused.  Those don't have to be the same groups.  In the modern era, they largely aren't.

Since there don't seem to be all that many Fused, from what we've seen so far, there should have been a large enough population of Parshmen at basically any time after the Recreance to house the Fused with some to spare.  We don't know exactly how many Parshmen there were at the time, but that probably wasn't the limiting factor.  He could have duped them in the same way he does present-day.

What might have accounted for Odium's delay was getting the first group ready, the group necessary to summon the Everstorm originally.  The present-day Parshendi had an aversion to their old gods, and even present-day they wouldn't have summoned the Everstorm without the Alethi threat.  Go back too far into the past, and the group might well have chosen to risk extinction rather than bring back their gods.

Duping ex-Parshmen into accepting the Fused is easy; Odium can do that any time.  Duping the Parshendi into summoning the Everstorm in the first place might not have been possible until their memories had been given time to fade.  (It still seems like it shouldn't have required nearly as long as it did, but at least it explains why Odium wasn't able to act immediately.)

15 hours ago, Calderis said:

@galendo all of this instances discount the Sleepless and Honor themselves saying that The delay was intentional.

Except that period wasn't the best time. It would have been if the Parsh weren't crippled. But the only singers capable of bonding spren, and therefore Fused, were The Last Legion/listeners a people dedicated at the time to rejecting their gods. And they have to accept the Fused willingly. 

What happened to the Singers hadn't happened, I fully agree, he would have pushed then, with no opposition and won. But he couldn't do it yet. 

I admit it slipped my mind that Odium needed willing dupes to kick-start the Everstorm and transform the Parshmen, and maybe he couldn't find a way to do that at the time.  Conning the Parshmen into accepting the Fused would be pretty easy, though -- he could have done that exactly the way he did present-day.

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I don't understand why this idea has so much resistance honestly. We're expressly told by multiple parties, one being Honor himself, that the delay is what Odium wanted.

I think the issue is that some of us have the feeling that something more must be going on.  Otherwise the timing seems hard to explain.  Why 4500 years, rather than 4000?  Earlier seems like it would be better for Odium because:

1) Fewer Radiant spren and more distrust among the spren means fewer Radiants to fight.  Maybe even none at all.

2) Less convenient access to Blade/Plate (or, more accurately, less access to gemstones to recharge the Plate) means less Shard-based resistance to overcome.

3) Though the Parshendi population will recover faster than the humans, proportionately, the longer you wait, the worse it actually gets.  Say you wait several generations for the Parshendi population to grow from, say, 20,000 to 200,000 -- a tenfold increase.  If in the same time the human population only doubles from, say, 10,000,000 to 20,000,000, you're actually outnumbered by over 9,000,000 more people than you were previously.  Better proportional odds, but way worse odds overall.

4) Giving the humans more time gives them more opportunity to develop fabrial tech like spanreeds, half-shards, etc.  Give them too long and they won't even need Radiants to stand against your Fused.

In conclusion, it seems like Odium would have had way better chances to succeed if he'd attacked earlier.  I can easily buy that Odium wanted to wait for Honor to die and the Radiants to disband.  But waiting any longer seems foolish.  Much better to attack when the humans are less prepared, less numerous, less technologically advanced.  So why did he wait so long?

Hmm.  Given the period of time involved, I can't see how Taln or anyone could hold out against determined torture, unless:

1) The torture did not last 4500 years.  Maybe Taln was able to play cat-and-mouse for four millennia.  Seems rather unlikely, but we don't really know anything about how Braize works.

2) Taln has some sort of resistance to torture.  Also doesn't really match what we've seen, but some people literally can't feel pain, so who knows?  We know Taln can feel pain, but maybe he has some sort of resistance.  Perhaps his relationship with Honor allowed him to resist until at least Honor's death.  Maybe Honor's protection was previously spread over all ten Heralds, but Taln got all of it when he was the only one who remained.

There are some other options, but I'm inclined to suggest some version of 2 as the most likely.  We know Taln was the best of the Heralds at not-breaking since he never broke during the normal Desolations, and if we assume that Honor provided some sort of magical protection that protected him until the Recreance or later, it might help explain how he lasted so long, especially if the protection took some time to wear off.

This might also explain why Odium was upset with Taln, as evinced by the singling out of Taln's temple during the Everstorm.  The best time for the new Desolation was probably shortly after the Recreance, before men really learned how to bond Blades and use Plate, when there were (comparatively) fewer Radiant spren and the Radiants' betrayal was fresh in people's -- and spren's -- minds.  If Odium waited for a century or so after Honor's death before he finally "got serious" with Taln, it could explain both how Taln lasted so long as well as why Odium was angry at him for resisting.

4 hours ago, Zodiac said:

Well the thing about having to many powers is they would lose their resonance. We see Nale has both is honor blade and radiant blade, so we know their is some benefit to having both, but we don't know how much that has to do with being a herald.  Besides all that, I don't think it would be beneficial to have that many surges in one person when you could give 10 blades to 10 different people. 

Not to nitpick too much, but we don't actually know that Nale gets a benefit by having both.  He might just have his Honorblade because it's his, for instance.  Or because he feels responsible for it and doesn't want it in unworthy hands.  Or because he considers emblematic of his continued upholding of Honor's plan (in his admittedly somewhat twisted view).

It's also worth noting that you can get all the surges with 5 blades, so the choice is really between having two "super-Radiants" versus ten regular ones.  My suspicion is that the flexibility of having five "regular" surgebinders is still greater than the power of one "super" surgebinder, but it's worth noting that there are advantages to having a lot of firepower combined in a single package.  For instance, if you need to get your force to the battlefield, getting the super-surgebinder there is going to require only a fifth as much Stormlight as getting the 5 regular ones there, which leaves you more Stormlight for the actual fight.  So it's not a question with a completely clear-cut answer.

Still, probably the best squad you could build is to give each of your Radiants one additional Honorblade.  That gives you ten Radiants with access to four surges each, along with the option of having your spren be a shield for your off-hand while still having a Blade in the other.  After that, there just isn't as much use for extra Honorblades.  The first Honorblade grants a doubling of surgebinding options and lets you use both hands -- the second Honorblade only grants a 50% increase in options and no additional physical combat capability.

So give all your Radiants one extra Blade.  That provides the best balance between flexibility and sheer raw power.

On 8/26/2018 at 6:40 PM, Weltall said:

It's also possible the ancient Radiants left that gate open on purpose. We know they wanted the city to be found eventually given the care they took to create and then hide the gem archive. Leaving one unlocked in a place that wasn't currently inhabited served as an easier way to hint to future generations where to find Urithiru, should knowledge of its exact location become lost, as it was. You still need a Radiant to open the way so it's not really much of a security risk and less of one than leaving an unlocked gate in a major city, but it still leaves a route open for people to find their way to the city when necessary.

Not implausibe -- the gem archive is fairly strong evidence that the old Radiants were planning for at least the possibility that the Knights Radiant would be reformed -- but the idea that the location of Urithiru would be lost but somehow the knowledge of an unlocked Oathgate on the Shattered Plains would be kept seems like somewhat of a stretch.  The exact or approximate location of Urithiru is probably common knowledge at the time the Radiants disbanded.  At least among the educated, I'd expect finding Urithiru on a map wouldn't be much different than, say, pointing out Tokyo on Earth.  Not only is it one of the most famous cities in the world, a whole bunch of those people have actually been there.

How many people knew that the Oathgate on the Shattered Plains would be left open?  Probably not very many.  And this sort of useless factoid would be soon forgotten, since it does no one any good if the Radiants are gone.  At least one or two ambitious kings/lords/thieves/desperadoes might have dreamed of plundering Urithiru and would have remembered its physical location for that if nothing more.  That gem-covered pillar alone would probably be worth a fortune.

Come to think of it, I'm really surprised that Urithiru wasn't plundered in all the years since the Recreance.  Maybe that's the real plot hole.  No peak on Earth has resisted determined mountaineers, and Roshar has Shardplate and Shardblades, which should make scaling even the toughest cliffs fairly straightforward.  Dalinar and Elhokar sure went up those spires quickly and easily enough.

On 8/27/2018 at 2:13 AM, LadyLameness said:

I assumed that the gates were sealed because of the decisions made by the other cities. If the Radiant's were abandoning Urithiru then there would be no one to regulate passage and trade and having a working Oathgate just creates a security risk for the other Oathgate cities. The gate to the Shattered Plains was left open because the Radiant's because there was no city left to demand it be closed. 

This is also a good idea that doesn't quite work.  There's no particular advantage to any city to having its own gate locked from the Urithiru side.  (Having it locked from its own side makes more sense from a security standpoint, but considering that Jasnah couldn't open the other gates means they must have been locked from Urithiru, too.)  I suppose I could see if all the cities agreed to have all the gates locked from Urithiru, basically supposing that each city could only get the others to lock their gates if it agreed to have its own gate locked, too.

But in this case not locking the Shattered Plains gate too is an oversight, since if one country did want to unilaterally unlock Urithiru, and had at least one Radiant, they could simply wait until their Radiant made the trip to Urithiru by way of the Shattered Plains (or for a Windrunner/Skybreaker/Elsecaller/Lightweaver, possibly directly to Urithiru if it's closer) and unlocked everything.  So there's still no especial reason to keep the Shattered Plains gate unlocked.

@MistboreD: You misunderstand me.  Dalinar's my second favorite character in the series at this point, after Kaladin and just edging out Adolin.  Renarin I will give you is quite dull to read about -- he's probably last on my list of major characters at this point, though where exactly you draw the line between major and minor is rather open to debate.

It's not that I think Adolin or Renarin are better characters than Dalinar.  It's not even that I think Kaladin is a better character than Dalinar (though I do).  It's that Dalinar inhibits other characters by his very presence.  Renarin is boring as sin, I'll grant you.  But a good chunk of the reason that Renarin's so boring is because of Dalinar.

Imagine for an instant that Dalinar died on the Tower, leaving Adolin and Renarin to work together to try to defend their princedom against all the might of Sadeas' armies and wiles, with all the other warcamps privately admiring Sadeas for his ruthless victory over his longtime enemy Dalinar.  That's a story worth reading.  (And a story where Renarin is a lot more interesting.)

Or imagine instead that Dalinar died at the end of WoR.  With a real investigation into Sadeas' murder (i.e., not putting Adolin in charge), perhaps Adolin gets found out, disgraced, exiled.  Renarin and Navani then have to try to maintain and expand Dalinar's fragile alliance.  You then get real consequences for Sadeas' murder and real character development for Renarin (and maybe even Navani).  That also sounds like a story worth reading.

It's not that I dislike Dalinar.  It's just that as long as he's around -- and especially now that he's the super-Bondsmith -- he's going to overshadow every other Kholin, whether it be Adolin, Renarin, or even Jasnah.  He overshadowed Elhokar, too.  Whatever his additions to the series, I'm not convinced that they quite make up for his very long shadow.

Still hoping for Dalinar, if only because I kind of feel like he should have died long since -- possibly as early as the Tower in WoK.  He overshadows Adolin and Renarin, who are both (potentially) more interesting characters.  Dalinar just doesn't have as much room to grow.

That's not to say I don't like Dalinar.  I do.  Him, Kaladin, and Taln are basically the only truly honorable characters in the series by my definition, so I'd be somewhat sad to see him go.  But he's been outstaying his welcome and overshadowing everyone else for quite a while now, and it's gotten even worse now that he's "Super-Bondsmith" or whatever.  Yawn.  Give me more interesting characters.

I'm inclined to go with "rule of convenience" from a meta perspective:

Situation: Brandon Sanderson needs Shallan to travel to the Shattered Plains.  Shallan needs to open the way to Urithiru at an appropriate climactic moment.  Urithiru needs to have not been found previously by Jasnah, who travels widely and is searching for it.

Solution:  The only functional Oathgate is on the Shattered Plains.

Result: Shallan goes to the Plains, climactic scene happens, all is well.

As others have pointed out, there isn't really a plausible reason for the Radiants leaving just the Shattered Plains route open, assuming locking the gates was intentional and easy.  It's hard to believe they couldn't leave one Radiant behind to shut the last door if they did evacuate, and even if the Shattered Plains was already wrecked and they saw no need to shut the last gate, leaving it open is incredibly lazy.  It'd be like locking nine doors to your house and leaving the back door open because "it's in the backyard and no one ever goes there."

2 hours ago, Scion of the Mists said:

Although it hasn't been confirmed directly, most of the evidence points toward the "special numbers" relating to planets/systems, not Shards (e.g. this WoB).  

Additionally, Cusicesh is "a level below" the Nightwatcher/Stormfather, so it would be strange to group them together.  

Regarding whether numbers relate to Shards or planets, that question's still rather open.  Why would Braize be 9-centric when the rest of the Rosharan system is 10-centric, unless it has something to do with Odium?  My guess is that there's kind of a "default" number for a planet or planetary system but that a local Shard can override that number if he/she wishes.

Regarding Cusicesh being "below" the Nightwatcher/Stormfather:  He's below them now, but perhaps not in the past.  The Stormfather's been boosted by Honor, for certain, and it seems like the Nightwatcher's probably been built up by Cultivation in a similar though not identical way.  So they're on rather different levels now, but they might have all been on a similar scale before the Shards arrived.

The best theory I've seen on this topic is that originally there were 16 "god spren" on Roshar that were made by Adonalsium: the Stormfather (pre-Tanavast), the Nightwatcher (pre-Cultivation), the Sibling, Cusicech, the Unmade (pre-Odium), and 3 other spren we don't explicitly know about yet.

Then Odium shows up, and since his Shardic number is 9, he goes and corrupts 9 of the Adonalsium spren, making the Unmade.

On 8/1/2018 at 4:15 PM, Juanaton said:

Now if this is true, it MIGHT imply that ALL magic from Roshar is surgebinding, all magic from Braize is voidbinding, and all magic from Ashyn is the Old Magic...in other words, the shardic source of the investiture doesn’t determine the magic, the planet of origin does.

Possible but it would set Roshar apart from the only other example Cosmere example we have of a planet with multiple active Shards -- Scadrial -- where there are at least two separate magic systems, despite the planet of origin being the same.

Mistborn spoilers:

It does seem that the Fused can only use one Surge each, and there should be nine types of Fused.  One theory that seems reasonable is that they're missing the surge of adhesion.  It's the surge shared by Bondsmiths and Windrunners (the most Honor-centric of the Orders), and philosophically it's about connecting things together, which is kind of the opposite of Odium's whole shtick.  So it also seems plausible that they're missing adhesion.

On 7/26/2018 at 0:08 PM, Calderis said:

You may need to rethink Azure's age... 

On 7/26/2018 at 0:56 PM, Vissy said:

Whatever the number you're thinking of, multiply it by ten and you're probably much closer.

Wait, why do people think this?  It's admittedly been a while since I read Warbreaker, but I don't remember anything about Breath extending lifespan.  Unless Azure is somehow Returned, it seems like she should age and die just like everyone else.

I could see Moash as some sort of Bondsmith.  Not to the Stormfather or Nightwatcher, probably not to the Sibling (though really we don't know much of anything about that particular spren), but if it's possible to bond, say, one of the Unmade, I could see it happening.

Mind you, Moash has taken a lot of shortcuts to power, and I'm not sure that a normal Nahel bond, even to one of the Unmade, would really do much for him or his character, which is admittedly somewhat stagnant just now.  Still, Neither a bond nor some sort of redemption arc would seem particularly out of place.  I think I'm voting for the redemption arc, actually, and I'm a bit surprised more people aren't on the same boat..

I get that there's a lot of hate on here for Moash, but, to be fair, what's he done that's so bad?  He:

1) Betrayed Kaladin/Tried to assassinate Elhokar.  Then again, he kind of had justification.

2) Went over to Odium's side.  I was kind of disappointed about this, since I was hoping/expecting some cool Diagramist stuff to come out of Moash's defection, and Odium's armies are just kind of boring, but the defection itself was kind of a Stockholm thing.  It wasn't like he actively sought out Odium in order to defect.  He got captured and made (arguably) the best of it.

3) Trained up the Parshendi, kind of like Kaladin did.  There is good in him still, I can sense it.

4) Finally killed Elhokar. In battle.  Where stuff like that happens.  Better than assassinating him, at least.

5) Assassinated Jezrien.  Not great, but opposite sides and all that. 

Basically, nothing that Moash has done is really all that bad compared to say Nalan or Szeth or Venli or even Dalinar.  Redemption kind of seems to be a theme of the Stormlight Archive -- maybe the Cosmere in general -- and it would neither surprise nor disappoint me to see Moash get his opportunity.

It does seem like there ought to be some sort of reward/perk for swearing the final Ideal, though precisely what it would be is unclear.  There's no practical, Realmatic. or good literary reason for growing gemhearts that I can see, so that's out.

I only see the "permanent Stormlight tap" idea working if it were a slow tap.  If a Windrunner could only draw enough Stormlight to keep a single half-lashing going indefinitely, for instance, then from a practical standpoint one is simply trading the finite resource of Stormlight for the finite resource of Time.  It would also allow Brandon to "turn off" any Radiant's power at will simply by having them get injured, as their body would then prioritize healing over other uses of power.  So it's not like the idea would be overpowered from a literary perspective.

I think that's the theory I'm going with until we see further evidence.  It even fits with what we've seen of Nale -- pulling in Stormlight without inhaling, but not so much Stormlight as to allow for surgebinding, just enough to make him stronger and faster.  With our only fifth-Ideal Radiant also being a Herald, though, I'm not sure that we can reasonably draw any conclusions about what the fifth-Ideal perk might be.  It's impossible to tell where one ability ends and another begins.

Most of Shallan's murders -- all but one, really -- are understandable.  Tyn, for instance, was quite spur-of-the-moment.  Shallan was under pressure and I'm not too sure she can be blamed for overreacting.  It was pretty clear that Tyn had both the means and the intent to kill her.

The ship thing was maybe a bit reckless -- okay, really reckless and again probably not the best possible choice -- but having the benefit of seeing her point of view I think we can agree that she intended to help the sailors.  So no real blame there, especially considering that she had very little time to think.  Same thing as Tyn, really.  She was put under pressure and had to react fast.

We don't really know what happened with her mother, so it's hard to pass judgement on that one.

But there is one murder that's hard to explain away, one murder that really supports @SzethIsBadAsHell's points, and that's the murder of her father.

There's no real way to sugar-coat this one, no way to write it off as anything other than cold-blooded patricide.  The man was no immediate threat.  They could have knocked him out, could have tied him up, could have kidnapped him or turned him over to the Highlord's justice or just run off to the ends of the earth.  Instead she chose to strangle him.

Does that make her a psychopath?  I don't know, I'm not a psychologist.  But it's pretty clear that Shallan is, at the very least, a cold-blooded murderess.

2 hours ago, SzethIsBadAsHell said:

For a second I thought Szeth was going to follow Nale.

That's okay.  For one second -- one crazy, glorious second -- I thought Szeth was going to swear to follow Nightblood.

On 6/25/2018 at 1:55 PM, SzethIsBadAsHell said:

Well I had no idea you could use They/then to reference something in the Gender neutral . So appreciate that . I mean I thought about the fact that it could be something we have yet to see , I just didn’t think that was Sanderson style . He usually drops a Chekhov gun, foreshadowing , hints etc . 

It should be noted that using "they" or "their" to refer to a singular person of unspecified gender is an informal usage, reasonably common in speech but very uncommon to see in formal writing.  The issue is that English doesn't have a singular gender-neutral pronoun (historically, the masculine form has been used in such cases).  Still, there are generally better ways to go about keeping gender ambiguous than resorting to the grammatically incorrect they.  For instance, the Stormfather's words could easily have been "No!  Leave the Sibling alone!  You have hurt that spren enough", which has the advantage of being gender-ambiguous without sounding juvenile.  You can also use "it" in a pinch, but that's considered somewhat rude for gendered things.  Probably not any less rude than "they", though, now that I think about it.

Long story short, I'm still somewhat hoping for a swarm-style spren to be the Sibling.  It's the only good way to make the Stormfather's lines grammatically correct, and using "they" as a substitute for gender seems like a good way to hide the swarm-nature from the readers.  Otherwise the lines just come off like something you'd read in bad fanfiction.  I'd like to think that Brandon is capable of better writing than that.

On 6/25/2018 at 5:03 PM, Jace21 said:

I also trust to Brandons foreshadowing enough to know that once the Sibling's identity is revealed, I will probably slap myself for not having figured it out sooner.

This would be totally cool and awesome, but I'm guessing it'll be some spren we've never seen before.  The only candidate I could otherwise think of would be Cusicesh, and apparently that's been nixed, so unless all the Aimians are part of some giant spren or something, I don't see many other options.  I suppose it could end up being one of the moons, but that seems kind of a stretch.

I think you need a "just glad it's over" option.

I have nothing against romance in books, love triangle or otherwise (well, okay, I think love triangles are frequently overused, though not necessarily bad).  Heck, one of my favorite pre-1900's books is Pride and Prejudice, which is heavily romance-based and features at least one love triangle and possibly as many as three, depending on how you count.  But here's the thing.  They have to be done well.

At the end of WoK/beginning of WoR I was open for anything.  Shallan and Kaladin?  Sure, why not -- they're both Radiants.  Shallan and Adolin?  Sounds good to me too.  I could've easily gone either way, or possibly some third direction instead.

But once the characters started interacting?  It was terrible.  Well, Adolin and Shallan were great, but Shallan and Kaladin were just...their scenes were just terrible.  Like, Shallan steals Kaladins boots because why?  That scene served basically no purpose except to guarantee that the characters get off on the wrong foot.  You've got two characters acting out-of-character, Shallan because she's stealing someone's boots (yes, she was willing to steal Jasnah's soulcaster, but it's not like she'd been portrayed as a kleptomaniac) and Kaladin because he just gave in to the lighteyed princess with a smile.  That's not exactly how he dealt with Jasnah, an actual lighteyed princess, or really any other lighteyes ever for that matter.  And the chasm scene?  I know other people seem to like it, God alone knows why, but the way the plot has to twist to get Kaladin and Shallan together is teeth-grindingly bad, as is the character interaction IMHO.  Though I will concede that everything gets much better once the chasmfiend fight begins.

I've hated the love triangle almost since the beginning, and I'm glad it's over with.  Since early in WoR I've been on the Shallan-Adolin side, mainly because the Shallan-Kaladin scenes were...less than stellar, in my opinion.  But honestly I'm just glad it's finished.  The triangle should probably never even have existed in the first place, but at least we needn't suffer it in the future.

On 6/8/2018 at 5:01 PM, Lightspine said:

Hemalurgically charged: It's a chain. This makes no sense, how does somebody get stabbed by a chain?

7 hours ago, Rainier said:

Sure, hemalurgy require spikes, as far as we know, but who knows what other kinds of magic are waiting to be discovered?

Just to be clear, the chain easily could be hemalurgically charged.  How do you make a chain?  First you take a spike and beat it into a link.  Then you take another spike, slip it into the first one, and beat it into another link.  Then you take a third spike, slip it through the second one, and beat that spike into a link.  Repeat as necessary.

I don't see any evidence to suggest that this chain is hemalurgically charged, but if it were, it could potentially be one of the spikiest things in the Cosmere.

5 hours ago, Idealistic said:

Skybreakers, if someone is falling from the tower, please go and help them, and, no, "there aren't any rules against falling from the tower" is not a valid excuse.

Skybreakers, this is doubly true if you helped them fall from the tower in the first place.  Nale is not a good role-model in this regard.

7 hours ago, IntentAwesome said:

Or, another possibility, is that the stormcloud and tree woman really are Honor and Cultivation. In which case, what is the third depiction? My thought is that maybe it isn't the moons of Roshar, but instead, a depiction of the Rosharan planets: Braize, Ashyn, Roshar. Seem possible, since we know that Roshar used to be more cosmere-aware. But then who is the man? The only thing I can come up with is some depiction of Adonalsium. Which over time may have later been re-appropriated to depict Ishar. If so, no wonder he thinks he's a god. 

It's entirely possible that the three images are of Honor, Cultivation, and Odium.  We don't know much about the...religion, or whatever you want to call it, of the old Radiants, but if you've got three gods, it's entirely possible that you want to honor all three gods, even if one of them happens to be a somewhat evil god.  For an in-Roshar example, think of the people of the Purelake.  For a real-world example, think of Loki, Hel, or Hades/Pluto.

The cloud could be either Honor (the Highstorm) or Odium (the Thrill, or any number of other possibilities), and the man could easily be the other, depending on your interpretation of the blue sphere.

25 minutes ago, Zellyia said:

Well there is this:

Recording gems which also just happen to correspond to the correct orders.

Granted, much of this could be simply ceremonial or symbolic.  But it's another odd tie in.  Why go the the trouble of having each order record into a specific stone type?

My guess is that this is just another way of encoding information for future Radiants.  The recordings are pretty short, so the haven't the time to say "This is the perspective of random Windrunner #17" on each recording.  By matching each recorded message to the Order who left it, they save time and still convey information.  I doubt that there's a hard and fast magic rule that only Windrunners can record on sapphire.  (In fact, we know there isn't, because a non-Edgedancer recorded on amethyst.)  It's simply a convenience.

1 hour ago, Xtafa said:

True, though certain spren can only be bound to a specific gem as shown with the fabrials. Maybe it was a bound spren in the gems that each order needed to interact with. 

Speculation but still 

That's not really how fabrials work, though.  Once the spren is bound, anyone can use the resulting fabrial.  The user doesn't even have to be a Radiant, much less a specific Order of Radiant.  And on top of all that, there's no real evidence that the old Radiants made their fabrials by way of capturing spren in gemstones, either.

No, I think the much more likely explanation is that the pillar is an old Radiant-style fabrial, that requires the presence/assistance of a spren in the Cognitive Realm.  This spren is presumably the Sibling, who has gone AWOL.  Thus the fabrial doesn't work properly any more, and won't until the Sibling returns.

The timing is the most questionable thing.  In Dalinar's vision, Honor regrets that the Dawnshards are lost -- he doesn't tell Dalinar to head on over to Aimia to pick them up before confronting Odium.

Of course, it's possible that Honor does know that the Dawnshards are on Aimia and doesn't want to risk mentioning that in a vision in case the visions get hijacked or sent to someone who decides he'd rather be a tyrant than a Bondsmith.  But even then I'd think he'd say something like "Find the Dawnshards.  I cannot tell you where they are, but find them."

It's also kind of hard to figure out how you'd lose weapons of great power, at least in the "oops, where did I put that again" sense.  They could have been captured.  They could have been destroyed.  But it's hard to imagine that Honor, the Heralds, the Radiants, and/or whoever had custody of them all just lost track of these super-powerful weapons (or whatever they were).

Personally, I kind of like the theory that the Dawnshards were ancient spren of Adonalsium that were reformed into the Unmade.  As of Oathbringer, that doesn't appear to be the most likely explanation -- the Dawnshards will probably just end up being some boring old weapons -- but it's still my favorite.

There might be a loose theoretical connection between the gemstones and the Orders, but nothing functional that we've ever seen.  It's not like Windrunners can only draw Stormlight from sapphires, for instance, or that sapphires could only be infused by Windrunners.  So suddenly having a fabrial where only Windrunners can supply Stormlight to the sapphires only Bondsmiths can supply Stormlight to the heliodors, etc., would be a pretty big change that hasn't been foreshadowed.  In fact it would be opposite of the way we've already seen the Oathgates work, where one Radiant can supply Stormlight to the entire system.