galendo

That's kind of my point. The Windrunner wouldn't have to do anything, because he's at the top of the gravity well. A coin fired from the ground at 70 mph wouldn't even reach him (assuming Earth gravity). A coin fired at twice that speed might or might not, depending on air resistance, but it certainly wouldn't be going very fast or do much damage in the unlikely event that it did hit. Even if the coins could reach him (not guaranteed but not entirely impossible either), they'd have used up most of their velocity fighting gravity. As for the mistborn throwing himself in the air and then firing, that seems like it wouldn't do much good. If he can get up to 100 feet, and if he can fire at 140 mph, then this would be a valid tactic (the coin would hit in a bit more than half a second at upwards of 100 mph). It actually still works pretty good, even if he can only get up 50 feet, provided he can still fire at 140 mph. At 70 mph, though, it's pretty much hopeless even if he can get himself 100 feet in the air first -- the coin still doesn't hit (in fact, it falls about 18 feet short). If the mistborn can get himself 50 feet up, a 100 mph shot either doesn't hit or just barely hits, depending on air resistance. If he can get himself 100 feet up, a 100 mph shot would hit in slightly less than a second at around 70 mph without air resistance, probably more like 50-60 mph with, though I don't actually have a formula to model air resistance, especially considering the coin's probably rotating in the air, so I'm just guessing here. I'm guessing that's enough to sting pretty good, but probably not cause serious damage unless it hits an eye or something. It's not like coins weigh a whole lot. (A silver half-dollar weighs less than a tenth as much as a baseball. A 60 mph baseball will cause bruises but probably not a broken bone. So getting hit by a half-dollar coin at that speed probably smarts but doesn't bruise.) So I guess the question is, at what speed can a mistborn fire coins? I remember Kelsier killing a room of hazekillers, but I think that was with an iron bar, not a coin. I leave the more cosmere-savvy readers to answer this question. And a related question: how high can a mistborn get off the ground with a steelpush? I seem to remember it being like 40-50 feet, in which case the mistborn had better be able to shoot at well upwards of 100 mph, but it's been quite a while since I read Mistborn. I also admit I kind of forgot about the leeching ability (I remember the abilities of the first trilogy pretty well but not those of the second trilogy). If that can be used at a range of 100-150 feet, then the strategy might work. I kind of remember it being touch-based or at least short-range, though. Again, I defer to readers who probably remember this series better than I do.

Right, but even still, five hours still seems at the low limit for a single lashing. First, "half a day" can vary widely. Probably six or seven hours if we're counting a day as "dawn to dusk", but ten hours if we're talking literally half a day, from the start of one day until the start of the next. So five seems pretty conservative here -- it might be as much as ten or twelve. The next question is, how many times did Kaladin lash himself? Assuming that the answer's at least two, and assuming that a half-lashing takes half as much Stormlight as a full lashing (we don't really know this, but it seems reasonable), then he could hang in the air at least four times longer than his flight to Hearthstone, and given Kaladin's tendency to over-compensate, it could easily be six, eight, or ten times as long, depending on how many times he lashed himself toward Hearthstone. So bare minimum, we're talking twenty hours in the air on the amount of Stormlight he had. Cut it in half, maybe, to account for the fact that he started the trip full of Stormlight, then maybe half again to account for the fact that he had more gemstones than he'd usually carry (though I seem to recall him taking about as much on his trip to Kholinar; I suspect that how much Kaladin would normally carry in his pouch has shifted permanently upward), and you're still back at five hours. Again, that seems like a pretty conservative estimate to me. I don't know what you mean by "while using other lashings to try and keep things up", but no matter how you look at it, it's way, way more than half an hour. So baseball-weight does seem kind of extreme, but we don't really know. We don't know how much a Shardblade weighs, and we don't know whether their weight is constant when they change size (altering their density) or whether their density is constant (altering their weight). It seems weird to think of a knife-sized Blade that weighs as much as a full sword, but maybe that's how it works. I've just always assumed that a live Blade was a much lighter version of whatever it was emulating. I've always assumed they could orient themselves. It's how Syl behaves when she's in human shape (as if she were lashing herself in odd directions), with Kaladin at one point noting that, although she stood sideways, her dress hung as if gravity were pulling to the side, not down. I think it also explains how Kaladin can maneuver just with his body, without additionally lashing himself, as he does on the flight to Kholinar (IIRC, though it might have been elsewhere) and in the battle against the Fused when he's lashed sideways. Well, if you're right, then this strategy clearly doesn't work. But 200 feet doesn't sound all that far. During highstorms Syl would routinely disappear for a while and go play with her windspren buddies on the edge of the storm, only returning when the storm was passed. I doubt she'd have left Kaladin alone for so long if it meant leaving him totally helpless. I don't know how wide a highstorm is, but I'm guessing it's measured in miles, not in hundreds of feet. Well, I dunno, but there's at least one chasmfiend's length between them, right? The plan was for Kaladin to lead the chasmfiend away so Shallan can retrieve her satchel, so there's got to be more than one chasmfiend's length between them, I'd think. Probably more. I don't think the length of a chasmfiend is described exactly, but eyeballing off of the height of the man in Shallan's sketch in Words of Radiance, they've got to be upwards of a hundred feet long. So I'd say there's at least a hundred feet between Kaladin and Shallan, probably more like 150-200. Not conclusive, but highly suggestive.

Nah, 70 mph seems pretty reasonable. That's about the speed that professional javelin throwers can throw at, and while that's with a running start (which Kaladin won't have), it seems offset by Syl being much lighter than a normal javelin and Kaladin having a Stormlight boost to speed and strength. Might even be too conservative. If Syl weighs as much as a baseball, well, any professional pitcher can throw a 90 mph fastball. But even if Kaladin can only throw at 60 mph instead, it doesn't change the math all that much. You're still looking at rather less than two seconds to dodge. It's true that this strategy doesn't work as well at night, but I was trying to leave out environmental factors. How good are Kaladin's eyes? Is Kelsier wearing a mistcloak, or is he dressed in dark clothing? What planet are they on, and which moon(s) are up? Is the sky overcast? What color is the ground? There's too many variables to take into account. So I just assume they can see each other. Is there a limit to how far Syl can get? I didn't know that, but I doubt it's 200-300 feet. She goes way farther than that to find him a leaf of Blackbane in TWoK. Though yes, if she can't take physical form at that distance, then this strategy wouldn't work. Still, it doesn't seem like it would be a problem. I'm guessing Kaladin and Shallan were farther apart than that at times during their chasmfiend fight, and Pattern didn't puff to smoke.

I don't think this is nearly as easy as you think. Remember that the Blade is only "in the air" for about one and a half seconds. That's a pretty small window to hit, especially considering that for part of that time the trajectory would be difficult to determine and for part of it the Blade's too close to dodge. And every time you're a bit too early or too late, you've burned metals for nothing. And even when you're spot on, you're still burning metals faster than your opponent, since you're inside a time-bubble and he's not. I also don't think the timing would be quite as regular as you think. Sometimes Kaladin might take one second to throw, sometimes two or three. With maybe a one-second window that you've got to hit, that's a huge fluctuation in timing. Yeah, this is probably your best bet, but you're still burning through iron, steel, and pewter pretty much constantly. I'm guessing the mistborn runs out/gets tired/screws up before the Windrunner does. Remember, you've got to make a sporadic change every two or three seconds whenever you don't know where the Blade is, and only get about a five-second break when you actually see the Blade hit ground. That seems like it'd be pretty hard to keep up. Sure, he runs out getting to Hearthstone, but look at how long Kaladin stays in the air: "After just half a day, he'd run out of Stormlight somewhere in Aladar's princedom." It also says that he'd "flown to the northwest at speed", which probably means he was using multiple lashings. It's unclear precisely how many times he'd lashed himself or precisely how many hours he'd been in the air, though "half a day" probably has to mean at least...let's say five hours. That's pretty conservative. So, bare minimum, Kaladin can reasonably hang in the air for five hours with a pouch full of Stormlight. In reality, it's probably several times that, but since we don't know how many times Kaladin had lashed himself or precisely how many hours he flew, it's hard to say for certain. The other times he runs out, when he's not conserving Stormlight for something else, are the battle before the Oathgate in Shadesmar and the battle in Thaylen City. In both cases he's using lots and lots of lashings fighting against flying enemies, and it's implied if not outright stated that he gets hit several times. We know that healing from wounds takes a lot of Stormlight, so that's probably where most of it's going. So five hours is a conservative estimate for how long Kaladin can hang in the air, if he doesn't have to do anything else. With another conservative estimate of a throw every ten seconds, that's a very conservative 1800 tries to hit a moving target at 200 feet. I could probably toss a rock off a cliff and hit someone scurrying around down below, given 1800 attempts. I'm pretty certain Kaladin could do better with the (bladed) throwing object of his choice. I suppose I should also point out that just because a Windrunner of Kaladin's level would almost certainly win the contest with a mistborn, doesn't mean that the Windrunner is better. Given the choice, I'd much rather be a mistborn than a Windrunner (at least for now; getting Plate might change my opinion). Mistborn are way more versatile and, on the whole, have much cooler and more powerful abilities. Against most of the Radiant orders, I'd put my money on the mistborn without a second thought, even against a full Radiant if the mistborn had atium. But mistborn just aren't good at fighting flying enemies who can spam instakill range attacks, and that's exactly what Windrunners can do. Without other environmental factors in the mistborn's favor, I really only see this contest ending one way.

Would a time bubble would give you time to dodge? I guess if the Shardblade were outside the bubble when it formed, but then you're burning your metals at a much faster speed than the other guy's going through his Stormlight. It's a short-term solution for the mistborn at best. And if the Blade's already within the bubble or hasn't yet left the Radiant's hand, you're burning through your metals for nothing. As for Kaladin hanging in the air, I seem to recall in Oathbringer a scene where he hangs in the air for hours, watching the sun set. Whereas a bead of atium runs out in like...a couple minutes? I kind of forget, but I remember that Vin is really startled at how quickly it burns the first time she used it. Iron, steel, and flared pewter are probably the mistborn's best long-term solution for dodging, but remember you've got to dodge suddenly every five or ten seconds. At some point, you're going to be a bit too slow and screw up. Even if there's only, say, one chance in a hundred that the Windrunner hits, he still wins in...ten or fifteen minutes, on average? Something like that.

I feel obliged to point out that, neglecting air resistance, a spear thrown straight down from a height of 200 ft at a speed of 100 ft/sec (about 70 mph) would travel the distance in about 1.4 seconds and would be traveling at about 200 ft/sec when it hit. This is much faster than the fastest major-league fastball and would be difficult to dodge even if you were staring straight at it as it were thrown. It Kelsier (or anyone) had to crane his neck to see it, it would be much more difficult. If Kaladin could orient himself with the sun at his back, I'm going to claim that it would be nearly impossible for anyone to dodge with anything short of atium (or Feruchemical speed, or...well, I guess there's a lot of ways to dodge. But none that a mistborn has access to, that I recall). The question for me isn't really if Kelsier could dodge. The question is how many tries Kaladin would need to hit him. Still, I'm guessing he gets in something like five or ten tosses a minute, easy, and with that many attempts, i really only see the battle ending in one way. (For the record, I'm assuming relatively flat/empty terrain and that both combatants have full knowledge of the other combatant's power set. There's just too many variables otherwise. I mean, if Kaladin tries a close-combat approach while Kelsier's burning atium, that ends really badly for him. But if Kelsier decides to try blocking a Shardblade with a dagger or his arm, trusting to flared pewter to stop the blow, that ends really badly for him. You can certainly come up with scenarios where the traditional mistborn beats the Windrunner, but I think they all require the mistborn to have a terrain/knowledge/intelligence/Investiture/luck advantage over his opponent.)

I think people are grossly underestimating the importance of the high ground. Heck, it's pretty much a maxim even in conventional tactics: seize the high ground. Who has the high ground? Kaladin, easily. How is Kelsier even going to fight back if Kaladin decides to hang out a couple hundred feet up or so? A coin fired upward at 100 ft/sec wouldn't even reach that high. A coin fired at 200 ft/sec might, depending on air resistance, but it certainly wouldn't be moving very quickly by the time it got there. So, at the worst, Kaladin should be able to draw the fight. He can get out of Kelsier's range easily and can flee the field a lot faster than Kelsier could if he's running low on Stormlight. He doesn't have a very good way of attacking Kelsier (this would be noticeably different if he were skilled with a bow, or even just carried a bow on him, but he doesn't), but I imagine even just hovering over Kelier's head and tossing Syl down time and again would be somewhat effective. Kelsier has to dodge every time, while Kaladin only needs to get lucky once. So given a fight between the guy at the top of a gravity well, who can't be hit, against the guy at the bottom of the gravity well, who needs to dodge a 200 mph Shardblade every ten seconds for an hour or two, I know who my money'd be on. If it were nighttime Kelsier could probably slip away, but while the sun was up I'm pretty certain the victory would be Kaladin's.

Smarter than humans doesn't really make much sense. If they were, humans and Rhysadium should have learned to communicate via written communication, and there's zero evidence of that from what I can remember. Also note that the quote is that it required "a lengthy explanation from Dalinar" and not "a lengthy argument from Dalinar". Not entirely indicative, but the wording suggests that he needed to do a lot of explaining before the horse got the idea. Kind of like how you might have to explain to a toddler. So that's my best guess at where Rysha-...Rhysha-...Shard-horses are at. Think of them like a young human child. Not nearly the level of an adult, but a fair bit above your average horse.

Do we know the Nightwatcher is a Bondsmith spren? I don't think so, but it seems likely. We know the Stormfather is (one possibility is that the Stormfather accounted for all three Bondsmiths -- it's actually my favorite explanation, but unfortunately probably not true), and the Nightwatcher seems likely. Then again, people might be putting too much emphasis on the fact that the Nightwatcher is the Stormfather's analogue. Remember that the Stormfather was around, (presumably) bonding with Bondsmiths, before Honor's shattering. Though it's also possible that they were bonding directly with Honor, or something. Perhaps my second-favorite theory, and one that's probably more likely, is that the Stormfather and the big giant spren from the Axis interlude (Crustarch?) were bonded to Bondsmiths and got "broken" during the Recreance. Crustarch became mindless, but the Stormfather was spared from that fate by merging with Honor's Cognitive Shadow. It explains why Crustarch doesn't seem to do much and why the Stormfather is so terrified of bonding with Dalinar. The Nightwatcher doesn't have to be the third spren in this case, but she's the only other big spren we've seen so far, so it's quite possible. If so, she might have been protected by Cultivation during the Recreance, but she also needn't have been bonded at the time of the Recreance. Maybe there were only two Bondsmiths at that moment in time. Long story short, though? We just don't know. It could go a number of ways.

From a narrative perspective, I don't think there's any real way to re-form Honor in the first five books, though it wouldn't surprise me a bit to see it happen by the end of the series. But there just hasn't been the foreshadowing or even the world-building necessary to pull that off in three more books. Maybe I shouldn't be saying this with Oathbringer on the horizon, since if it goes significantly into Shard splintering and reforging then this could change, but so far in two books splintering hasn't even been mentioned and there's certainly no indication that the process can be reversed. Plus, if you re-form Honor in the front five, what do you have to look forward to in the back five? Putting back together a splintered Shard would be something of a game-changer. More of a game-changer than the series -- either Stormlight or Cosmere, take your pick -- needs right now, to be honest. Back five, though? I can totally see it happening. Actually, I'd probably be a bit disappointed if it didn't.

Best single line: "Honor is dead. But I'll see what I can do." Best single scene: Bridge Four rescuing Dalinar and company from the Tower.

But...red isn't the Lightweaver's color, right? Aren't they silver?

Would founding through dishonorable means (whatever that means) have broken the first Oath, though? My impression is that the Orders have sufficiently disparate views on the Oaths that no single event could ruin them all. At least, I've never heard a reasonable theory as to one that could. Also, it's not at all clear -- and in fact in Dalinar's case, strongly implied otherwise -- that dishonorable behavior in one's past causes any difficulty with one's spren bond in the present. So even if they KR were founded dishonorably, I wouldn't expect that knowledge to interfere with the current Radiants' Oaths. While there are certainly explanations that might have caused a majority of the KR to abandon their Oaths, there doesn't seem to be anything that would realistically account for, say, 95% of Radiants to do so. Think of our modern-day Radiants and proto-Radiants: can you envision a single thing that would convince Dalinar, Kaladin, and Szeth to abandon their Oaths? Or even two out of the three? And they're only three out of maybe ten or fifteen candidates -- call it 20%. And even 5% of the KR of the Recreance would still be a significant force to be reckoned with. Hard to write them into the ashes of history, which is what apparently happened. And while the organization could have collapsed through a number of ways or means, the Recreance is a very...extreme way for it to happen, to say the least. While I've always assumed from Dalinar's vision that the Recreance happened effectively simultaneously in five different places, at two Orders per location, I realize that there's no non-circumstantial evidence to support this. Still, we can strongly infer that the entirety of the Radiants broke their Oaths or went entirely (and perpetually, somehow) underground. If any appreciable number of Nahel spren had survived, some of them would have bonded again, and the KR as a whole would not have died out. Even if Nale were running around killing all the proto-Radiants at the time, we know that he can't be everywhere and stop everyone. Yes, I agree that the point was to make the spren impossible to revive (or to give humanity constant access to Shards regardless of their willingness to swear Oaths, or for some other functionally equivalent reason). My point, however, is that there's no reason to break their Oaths in such a sudden and inexplicable fashion. The way they did it caused a large amount of chaos, infighting, and death. If they had just spoken with the inhabitants of Feverkeep and arranged a peaceful transfer of arms, they still could have broken their Oaths, still trapped the spren in deadblade form, but saved a lot of pain and death in the process.

My honest opinion is that Brandon's sort of written himself into a corner here. I've considered nearly every reasonable possibility and found them all unsatisfactory. Some of the theories I've heard, and their refutations: 1) Theory: The KR get drawn into Braise when they die, and they don't like finding out. Why it fails: this doesn't work because many Knights presumably just wouldn't care, at least not enough to abandon their oaths. Szeth does what he does modern-day believing that he'll be eternally damned for it, so clearly fear of damnation isn't enough by itself. Besides, this also doesn't explain why they all broke their oaths at once. All they have to do is each individually break their oath before they die; it's not like there's any rush. 2) Theory: The continued presence of the KR threatens a Desolation. Why it fails: this fails to explain why the KR could have existed for millennia without causing a Desolation. Plus, delaying the Desolation by a few hundred years at the cost of all the people who could possibly fight it seems pretty dumb. 3) Theory: The continued presence of the KR draws power from Cultivation, leaving her vulnerable to Odium. Why it fails: this doesn't work because the Investiture of the nahel spren doesn't get returned to Cultivation after the Desolation but gets trapped in the Shardblades, which the KR presumably knew. Also, even if for some reason there were too many KR, or they were consuming too much Stormlight, it does not follow that all of them must abandon their oaths, only enough to bring the number down to an acceptable level. 4) Theory: The KR abandon Honor, believing Odium will then flee Roshar and leave them all alone. Why it fails: this seems completely anathema to the "Journey before Destination" thing, is foolishly optimistic, and doesn't seem to have worked anyway. It also fails to explain why all the KR went along with this, as it seems that Radiants like Kaladin just wouldn't be willing to kill their spren for such a nebulous and unnecessary (at the time, since there hadn't been a Desolation in ages) goal. Plus, this could not be used "to destroy the new Orders if they arise" as Honor is already dead and Odium obviously still around. 5) Theory: The spren are involved in breaking the KR, so the KR destroy them in vengeance or to stop it. Why it fails: this fails for the same reasons as the first theory. Some KR just wouldn't care, and there's no reason to jump into the Recreance all at once or right away -- before they individually die is plenty soon enough. 6) Theory: The KR discover the Heralds' deception, so they give up. Why it fails: much like theories 1) and 5), there's no reason to suppose that all KR would feel the need to quit, nor does it explain why they all need to quit at once. 7) Theory: The KR were put in a rock-and-a-hard-place situation, where abandoning their oaths was somehow inevitable no matter the choice. Why it fails: given the disparate nature of the Knights' oaths, the contradiction must have to do with the first oath. While it might just be a failure of imagination on my part, I can't see any situation that would force such an inevitability. Plus, it doesn't explain why the Recreance went down the way it did. Why didn't the Windrunners and Stonewards explain the dilemma to the leaders of Feverstone Keep and arrange a peaceful transfer of their Shards rather than leave the soldiers to fight among themselves? 8) Theory: The KR were mind-controlled by Odium. Why it fails: unlike the other theories, this is at least theoretically plausible (since we have no real idea what Odium is or isn't capable of doing), but it's not terribly satisfying and hasn't been foreshadowed in any way. Additionally, it seems to go against what we know about the way the magic works: the KR bonds to Honor and Cultivation ought to protect them from Odium's influence. Also, it could not be "the secret that broke the KR", since it's not a secret at all. There's probably a few more theories that I'm not thinking of at the moment, but I've never yet heard one that actually seemed believable. I've tried to include at least two objections to each theory mentioned above, but many of the theories have even more objections that I'm not stating for brevity. Basically, any believable theory has to answer the following objections: 1) Why did all the KR abandon their oaths? This is the big one. Note that all the above theories except the last and arguably the first and fifth fail to adequately address it. In my experience, you can't get ten people to all agree on where to have dinner on a given night. Getting thousands of people to all kill their bosom companions and, incidentally, give up on their superpowers, not to mention the oaths they've spent a lifetime upholding, just doesn't seem at all plausible. 2) Why did the Recreance happen all at once? Even if most or somehow all the KR were convinced to abandon their oaths, as in situations 1), 5), and 7), any believable theory needs to explain why they all did so at the same time. What time crunch were they under? This can be explained if the Recreance were some sort of mass suicide-pact in which there was fear that some individuals might not go along with it (it also leaves room for either the Lightweavers or Truthwatchers to be the betraying Order), but other theories, in particular any relying on individual dissatisfaction of the KR as its motivation, tend to founder here. 3) Why did the Recreance happen the way it did? Why didn't the Windrunners and Stonewards hand over their Shards peacefully? Why not explain their motivations to the people they were abandoning? There's a few other questions that individual theories would need to answer, but these are the big three. Of the theories listed, only the last can explain all three (it turns out that "mind control by Odium" can explain all sorts of things, from Tavargian to Amaram to Sadeas to Gaz to Nale to Elhokar's wife to whatever else you care to name; but it's neither satisfying, believable in its own right, nor well foreshadowed), and it has some other objections. All the others struggle to answer even one objection, and generally fail completely at the other two. None except arguably theory number four at all manages to explain objection number three. I've basically resigned myself to the fact that whatever Brandon comes up with, it's going to have some massive logical gaps in it or some pretty serious hand-waving cop-outs. It's annoying, and maybe one of Brandon's biggest flaws as a writer; but he did it in Mistborn, he did it in Elantris, he did it in Warbreaker, and I won't at all be surprised to see it happen here, too. (As an aside: that doesn't mean they're bad books. Brandon Sanderson is a far better writer than I am or will likely ever be. But he does have a tendency to over-promise and under-deliver when it comes to mysterious plot elements. And romances, but that's another story.) I'll be happy to be proven wrong -- I love that feeling of wonder when you've convinced yourself that something can't be done, only to finally see how it all works -- but I'm sure not holding my breath.

I'm pretty sure that the Elsecaller perk is their great sense of direction. It's mentioned several times that Jasnah always seems to know where she is, almost supernaturally so. How useful that is in the Cognitive realm, we haven't seen. Maybe a little, maybe a whole lot.

Personally, I'd weight them about the same. Both of them generally mean to do the right thing. Both of them sometimes wonder what the right thing actually is. Both of them make mistakes. The only thing that's really certain is that they're both far more honorable than anyone else. IMHO, no one else even comes close. (I suppose you could make an argument for Lift.)

My thoughts are that the first arc will end in a sort of "bittersweet tragedy" or something like that. For instance, maybe Roshar is wrecked but the KR and/or Mr. T. manage to keep some people alive and Odium still bound to the greater Roshar system. At the very minimum I expect the Stormfather to be mortally wounded, making life difficult for the new Radients in the second arc, though I suppose technically that could wait for book six or so. I also expect Dalinar to die, almost certainly in a climactic fashion, but then I've been expecting that for two whole books now. I doubt he'll be the only character to kick the bucket, either; there's plenty of people in Bridge Four for a few tragic deaths there, and while I really wouldn't mind Shallan going out in a blaze of glory, I'm not holding my breath, though I expect more deaths among the Radiants as well. Basically, the only way I can really see the story working is for the fifth book to end on a "downer but with hope" ending. There's been too much tragic foreshadowing for anything else. I don't know how well that will satisfy most people, but it's the ending I'm hoping for right now.

To be fair (or nitpicky, rather, if you prefer), I don't think we technically know any of this. We know that the lighteyed "gene" got into the Roshar population somehow, but the precise mechanism is unclear. The modern-day lighteyes might as easily be descendants of Radiants as descendants of those who took up the dead Blades. It's also possible, as far as we know, that the amount of time a darkeyed Rosharan's eyes spend in the lighteyed spectrum after bonding a blade and/or spren depends on the number of oaths the Radiant has spoken. It seems possible that as Kaladin swears more oaths, his eyes will become bluer for longer, with permanent blueness coming after the final oath. Personally, my money's on Moash's eyes reverting if he loses his blade, but I don't think we know enough to say. It's also possible (though I think it unlikely) that if Moash had bonded a different Blade, his eyes might not have changed. We really just don't know enough to say for sure. In each case, darkeyed becoming Radiant and darkeyed bonding a Blade, we have literally a sample size of one. (With, technically, the exception of Lift. But I don't recall her eye color being explicitly mentioned in Edgedancer.)

If anything, I'd see the Recreance as the opposite of an attempt to recombine Honor. It's taking flexible pieces of Investiture (spren) and forcing them into single, well-defined forms (Shardblades). WoB also says that Honor wasn't splintered at the time, anyway, though he's also described splintering as a slow process, so it's not impossible that the Recreance was an attempt to delay or reverse that process somehow. It doesn't quite seem like it fits, though. How could killing Honor's spren possibly help keep Honor alive?

Well, I'm pleased to have helped, even if mostly inadvertently. But I realized that I didn't address your theory last time, so I'll do that now. Basically, I'm a bit skeptical. I'm not aware of any in-world reasons why it couldn't be true, but 1) When Kaladin swears his second Oath ("I will protect those who cannot protect themselves"), he gets the boost. But Kaladin's basically been protecting those who cannot protect themselves for like half the book at that point. So honestly, this one seems a pretty minor step forward. I'd think, if your theory were true, he wouldn't get the boost here. 2) When Lift saves Gawx, it seemed like a pretty big step forward. We haven't seen her prior to that scene, so it's hard to tell how much progress is really being made here, but it seems like at least as much progress as the Kaladin one mentioned above. 3) The determination of who's making a big leap forward all at once seems rather fuzzy. Maybe you think Kaladin's oath was a big leap forward and Lift's wasn't while I think the opposite. In-world, who's making this determination? The spren? The Stormfather? It seems...I dunno. Not impossible, but a bit arbitrary. I prefer to think that there's a less fuzzy explanation for the boost.

I'm not completely sure what I think about the glyph and the Stormlight boost, but my working theory at the moment is that it's something to do with the Windrunners. We've seen oaths (or the equivalent) from a Bondsmith, a Lightweaver, an Edgedancer, and a Windrunner, and only the Windrunner got the boost. It could be -- somehow -- that Kaladin is special, or maybe that Syl is. After all, he's not just a Windrunner but, at the moment, the only Windrunner, since Syl was the only honorspren to come across. Since Dalinar is the only Bondsmith, though, I'm a bit hesitant to adopt this interpretation. I do think it's significant that Kaladin's the only Radiant we've seen get the boost, though. I'd be curious to know whether rules for the boost were the same pre-Recreance as it is today. My hunch is that they weren't -- that the boost we see (or don't see, most of the time) is tied somehow to Honor's shattering. Come to think of it, it could be that only the spren that were around pre-Recreance provide the boost. Maybe it was like Tanavast's version of a congratulatory postcard, or something. We know: Syl - Has "helped men kill before", i.e., was around pre-Recreance. Pattern - IIRC, says that all the Cryptics at the time were killed. Not around pre-Recreance. Stormfather - Was sort of around pre-Recreance, but not as the same spren that he is today. Wyndle - Wasn't around pre-Recreance (not completely certain, but strongly implied in AU). I don't think we know about Ivory or Glys, unless there's hints in the Oathbringer snippets, which I haven't read yet. Someone correct me if we have evidence either way. But so far, Syl seems like the only Recreance-era spren we've seen, and Kaladin's the only one who got the boost. Maybe not a coincidence?

It's also possible that her "other experiences" were just the natural results of bonding a spren. We know that Kaladin and the bridgemen went through some pretty strange experiences before they figured out the whole Stormlight shtick. Her experiences might have been relatively "mundane" things like being followed/harassed by a sentient spren. That's how Kaladin's and Syl's relationship started out, it's how Lift and Wyndle's relationship started out (as near as I can tell), and it's just possible -- even probable -- that Jasnah and Ivory's relationship also started out with some events that seemed uncanny. If you count the visions, even Dalinar's and the Stormfather's relationship started out pretty bizarrely. Long story short, while Jasnah's "experiences" might refer to something deeper, they also might just be the result of bonding Ivory.

My favorite scenes, in order, at least at the moment (order may change, somewhat, depending on my mood at the time): 1) Bridge Four rescuing Dalinar and company from Sadeas' betrayal. 2) Kaladin and Adolin's duel against four Shardbearers. (It also has the best line in the series: Kaladin's "Honor is dead. But I'll see what I can do." 3) Jasnah interviewing Shallan to be her ward. 4) Kaladin strung up in the Highstorm; or more accurately, the immediate aftermath. But I also love the description of Syl doing what she can to part the winds. 5) Syl bringing Kaladin a leaf. 6) Kaladin swearing his second Ideal. 7) Dalinar coming to grips with the fact that there's no way he could beat Szeth, either now or in the past. It's maybe worth noting that five of the seven scenes involve Kaladin -- is he my favorite character because he gets so many great scenes, or do I think his scenes are better because he's my favorite character? (Do windspren cause the wind, or are they attracted to it?). I'm sure other people get good scenes, too...but I'd probably have to reread the books to remember them. These ones come pretty much immediately to mind.

Could be, but I think the fact that basically no one sees deathspren ever, unless they're really super close to death, suggests that deathspren are one of the spren that are totally invisible in the Physical Realm. Only those who have drifted away from the Physical (who are about to die) can see the deathspren. Kaladin sees deathspren when he lies mortally wounded, but none of the bridgemen see them, even though the spren are present. I think that's because they're straight-up invisible in the Physical Realm.

Eh, I dunno about that. From what we've seen of Elsecalling, it doesn't seem to work well over short distances. And while I admit that being able to throw transforming lightning at people could be useful, I imagine it's a lot more useful against regular people, not other Radiants. If Shardplate can block Voidbringer lightning, it can probably block Elsecaller lightning as well. Which Order is the most powerful, though...as others have mentioned, it really depends what, precisely, you want done. What the circumstances of the engagement are, in other words. Want someone assassinated? Probably a Lightweaver is your best bet. Need to go one-on-one against a single enemy? Of the Orders we've seen, probably a Skybreaker is your first choice, though I wouldn't be surprised if in some circumstances a Dustbringer or Stoneward were better. Need to go one-on-many, against a number of weaker foes? You'd want to call up your local Windrunner. Basically, which Order is best for a task depends on what the task is.