kari-no-sugata

Heh, I was rather surprised to see a rather unique title from a thread I had started years ago in the OB board. But looking at the last few posts, it makes sense I was very happy to see Wit and Shallan interact again, this time in a substantial way. I always LOL'd at the scene in WoR when Shallan suddenly hugs Wit but it was a shame there was no further references. So... yeah... I got a bit excited as soon as we saw Wit in OB and very much enjoyed the immediate exchange in "Aim for the sun" and "The girl who stood up" was beautiful. Well, anyway, it looks like Shallan isn't going to take after Wit quite as much as I expected but it was interesting to see him take up a Cryptic. He used to get up to all sorts of tricks before so it might be hard to differentiate between him using Rosharian Lightweaving vs other techniques, but we might see him use Rosharian Lightweaving the next time we see him. Also, to quote myself: The Shallan and Navani interactions were rather disappointing... but Shallan did get a sword-master - Adolin!

Part of me cynically wonders "will Brandon actually let the characters discuss such things properly?". After all, we've barely seen any discussion between the characters about their abilities, their spren, their Ideals, possible dangers, possible tactics and combinations. On the other hand, Szeth has specifically been mentioned to have used all the available Honorblades for training so should be familiar with all Surges. What would be the point of that if it doesn't have some kind of payoff? Though I don't know how deep he went into his training. There's also the possibility of Jasnah getting all sorts of interesting information from Ash (and Taln if he can be healed).

Should be. They are mentioned:

Certainly. I'm not sure how many set battles they'll have vs infiltration missions but any set battles should allow Adolin to bring his Plate. Just one problem: the more Adolin stands out as a commander type or similar the more likely he is to be personally targeted, eg by a Fused or two. It's not the same of course but Szeth was able to take on full Shardbearers as well. We'll probably see Fused with Plate as well. With Plate, Adolin would probably be around as useful on the battlefield as a squire I guess or maybe a bit more, depending on the squire and the nature of the enemy.

The problem with this argument is that normal = squishy. You then need to jump through extra hoops to justify their usefulness and survivability on the battlefield. Adolin is going to be increasingly left behind unless he gets some kind of power-up. Adolin got to shine at the end of OB because they only had a small force there and he could make a difference. In better prepared battles in future where there's 10s of Radiants and many more squires, he's going to struggle to make a difference. Of course, he has skills outside of combat too - eg, leadership and so on, but him focusing on that would equally take him outside of combat.

I get where you are coming from and there are all sorts of dangers - confirmation bias is a real risk. I don't think we know enough from the spren perspective, for example. However, to flip some of the arguments around: Brandon has made it very clear that reviving a dead spren is genuinely difficult. For a start, nobody has done it before. From WoBs and in-world clues, it looks set to be "nearly impossible" without the original person who had bonded Maya, and in-world it is currently considered to be "impossible" (per WoB). In other words, we can be sure that an awful lot of things have to go right for a Blade to revive. What we don't know is how important saying the Ideals would be - one of Brandon's WoBs could be read as "it's not that Ideals that are important but something else" or also "speaking the Ideals alone is not enough and more is needed" (personally I think it's the latter). So, what has gone right for Adolin? Well, it's subjective and debatable of course and I doubt Brandon is going to go into the details just yet but I would think that any of the following might help to some degree. I definitely don't think they would hurt: That Adolin has bonded Maya (using the gem) for a long time That Adolin has not treated Maya like a tool and instead has been very respectful and he refused to name her because he didn't know her real name. We know from the Stormfather that eyeless can sense things in the real world (it made a difference to the spren that is the Oathbringer blade). We don't know exactly how Maya would evaluate all his actions though. That Adolin could "meet" Maya in Shadesmar. This is obviously subjective but I feel that it was one of two things in the book that was critically important. Adolin was a bit surprised but he obviously showed concern about Maya and even called her a friend. We saw Maya respond by protecting Adolin from the Fused. That Adolin and Maya were present during the Honor's Perpendicularity event. It seemed to temporarily heal Taln at least. In Adolin and Maya's case their "bond" rockets forwards during, far beyond anything ever seen with an eyeless, but it's hard to say how much it was due to Honor's Perpendicularity and how much was build up during Shadesmar but I suspect both were important - that it required everything up to that point for Adolin to be able to sense Maya's feelings. I think Honor's Perpendicularity acted as a catalyst - drastically enhancing something that was already there. I don't know how far it would be from here to Maya's actual revival. It's certainly a tangible step forwards. I suspect there's quite some distance to go. That Maya appears to want to form a deeper bond with Adolin. This kind of overlaps with 4 above but I want to focus on the personal aspect separately to the (likely) spiritual healing from Honor's Perpendicularity. Maya's thoughts conveyed to Adolin indicate approval. She was reluctant to be handed over to someone else. She warned him about danger. Not once did she give a sense of "don't do that again" or similar. So, at a minimum I think it's safe to say that Maya would rather be wielded by Adolin than anyone else. I don't know if we can say for certain that Maya actually likes Adolin in absolute terms though. If she doesn't hate him at all then I think that would be very significant. Points 3 and 4 could be considered to be plain "luck" - being in the right place at the right time. I think all points build up on top of each other. Ie points 1 and 2 combine to give us point 5. We don't know how common each Radiant Order is but there's no Skybreaker eyeless (that we know of) and there wouldn't be any Bondsmith eyeless either. So that gives us about a roughly 1 in 8 chance that Adolin just happens to win a Blade that might fit his personality - compared to the other points above, I don't think it's too big a deal and not much suspension of disbelief is required. You could say there's a certain amount of self-selection - that if that luck hadn't have gone Adolin's way there's would be no story here. But even then it only gets us a small step along the way and every step is crucial. I think the 4th point was particularly important short term and I think the 5th point is particularly important long term. Regardless of Oaths/Ideals etc, if Maya is not personally attracted to Adolin then I don't think there's any chance of her being revived. I think it's likely necessary that she would want to be revived. I don't know if Adolin would need to speak the Edgedanger Ideals to revive Maya but I'm pretty sure he would need to in order to stay bonded to her long term, like with any Nahel bond. So, how important is it for Adolin to be Edgedancer-like? Hard to say but I think he would have to be a candidate to some degree else Maya wouldn't like him (most likely). Maya will now be able to direct Adolin to be more Edgedancer-like as well, through the improved bond. So there's a possible positive feedback loop here. It wouldn't be surprising to see Adolin become more Edgedancer-like by the time we next see him. Looking to the future, it seems clear to me that "first generation Knights" (ie first one in their Order to speak the Oaths) have a tougher time since they don't have anyone to learn from. Second generation Knights (the Skybreakers squires, Kaladin's squires, Shallan's squires) can be helped by the first generation Knights. So if Adolin can learn from Lift then that would surely help to some degree. Becoming her squire could help as well - at a minimum it would at least help Adolin become more dangerous on the battlefield and help the overall revival feel like a progression. Whether Lift and Adolin would actually do this or not I have no idea - I think Adolin would be humble enough but I'm not sure that Lift would want squires. @PhineasGage it feels to me that you're given too much weight to the Vorin ideals. We know they're unreliable and in some cases plain wrong. Personally, I'm ignoring them for predicting this sort of thing.

Yeah, there's quite a few differences and I did some posts on this during the weekly tor.com discussion, before the full book was out. Seems to be something like: For Lightweavers prior to speaking the Ideal: need to be willing to admit to some deep secret that they would prefer to ignore. For Lightweavers after speaking the Ideal: forced to confront their dark secret at possible cost to their sanity. If they fail badly they could regress (or commit suicide or maybe even deliberately kill their spren). If they deal with it poorly they'll probably never to be able to progress again. For other known Orders prior to speaking the Ideal: need to sense/determine what the Ideal is and be ready to live it. For other known Orders after speaking the Ideals: how difficult it is to live those Ideals would depend upon the situation - some Ideals could be easy to uphold on a desert island, for example. If they fail to live up to the Ideal then they would regress. If they deal with it poorly they'll probably never be able to progress again. For Lightweavers, it's all internal. It would be interesting to see if this can be confirmed but my guess is that if a Lightweaver doesn't have enough "lies" that are big enough to qualify for an Ideal/Truth then they would be stuck at that level. Eg, if Shallan had no more major lies left in her life then she wouldn't be able to advance again. So if a Lightweaver can confront all their lies properly (whether it's 1, 2, 3 or 4) then they could probably reach a happy balance and be fairly unconstrained in their behaviour/actions (so long as they don't develop new major internal lies). But how many actually survive the mental challenges? It'll be interesting to see how it works. Do all Orders get the Shardblade in the same way? Do all Orders get Shardplate in the same way or at the same level? For example, some Orders might get Shardplate immediately on swearing the necessary Ideal while with others perhaps it requires an extra step. Or maybe it requires an extra step for everyone? For Shallan, I don't think it would be something fuzzy like "has truly faced her last Truth" though - seems a bit too arbitrary.

I think all you need to be able to talk to Nightblood is to have his approval, though that might include passing the "Nightblood test" which can include touching him or the scabbard IIRC. Anyway, it doesn't take much. Given how invested Wit is (Pattern says he's like a spren) and how Cosmere aware he is I don't think it would be hard for Wit to remotely talk to Shallan (or prepare something that would allow him to in future). Wit could manipulate Shallan's own Lightweaving, for example. Being able to remotely talk to someone seems to require some level of Connection but doesn't appear to be too hard if you know how, I would say. It certainly does not require shards or super Invested entities - Radiant spren can manage it easily. Unless Odium has directly touched Shallan or has somehow gotten some of his Investiture into her, it would probably be nearly impossible for him to talk to her. Given that Odium doesn't know that Shallan is a Lightweaver I think it's safe to say that he hasn't touched Shallan directly so far. Given that Shallan has directly touched Wit more than once (and he's probably used Allomancy at least once on her and probably other things), I don't think it's unreasonable for Wit to be able to talk to Shallan remotely. How easy it is for him and whether it has any conditions I don't know - for example, maybe Shallan was somewhat pulled into the Congnitive or Spiritual Realm at this point, making it possible for Wit to talk to her (the voice stopped when the "fight" ended). This is speculation of course. I'm not saying that the voice was definitely Wit's. But I think it would have been possible. I doubt it was Odium's. It could have been one of Odium's forces but there doesn't appear to be any good candidates. Chapter 89, Damnation: I believe that's the only example. Obviously has spying implications... If Odium checked/verified everything then there wouldn't be much point asking for information in the first place (for example, he asks Taravangian how much the Alethi know about Urithiru at the end). It's not like Shards can easily do anything. Vivi could hear Nightblood just fine. Okay, she's Invested to various degrees during Warbreaker but even when she was Drab I think she could hear.

Nightblood can definitely communicate telepathically without a physical connection. Kelsier could communicate from beyond. Shallan could feel Drehy's thoughts from Shadesmar, so more would probably be possible. Odium's forces probably thought Shallan was an Elsecaller due to Taravangian.

Really hard to tell what Mraize is up to. Random thought: We didn't see Ash make any attempt to destroy the drawings of herself. Is that because she was distracted by something more important or because true depictions don't bother her.

You say it's for beta readers, so does that mean it will be private / closed to public readers? (I presume so but I haven't heard of such things before...)

In my case, I was quite confident that Shallan and Adolin would end up together (I didn't expect a wedding so soon, though the plot somewhat forced that). However, if I'd point to one passage that doesn't work for me, it would be this one near the end: This feels like a double leap of faith - that Adolin can do this and that this makes things just work for Shallan. It doesn't work for me emotionally or logically. It feels too arbitrary. It doesn't help that Shallan is really worn out at this time and it feels the wrong moment to make a big decision. I've had points in my life when I've spent months thinking about something, trying to decide, and suddenly it can click - this has happened several times for me. But, that feels rather unfair in a book. I certainly believe that Adolin is a good listener and can be more perceptive than people give him credit for but it feels too much here unless Shallan is visibly shifting as well (which I don't think is the case). I can theorise about this all but it feels weak. Wit told Shallan she has to forgive herself but there doesn't feel a particular moment when this happens. Jasnah once does have a thought (regarding Renarin) about how life can be harder but much more fulfilling when you find the courage to choose and that could apply to Shallan as well here. It probably would have helped to see more of Adolin's feelings for Shallan in his POVs (there's surprisingly little - there was more in WoR) Anyway, this scene didn't work for me at the time so the follow-on scenes from this didn't work either. I feel better about it now but I'm not sure I'll ever find this scene to be satisfying... even though I more or less got what I wanted in the end.

For reference, in chapter 63, there's this: So basically, Veil wants to flirt with Kaladin and tease him and considers Adolin to be boring in comparison. Shallan disagrees. In chapter 77, these's also this (about Shallan and Adolin from Kaladin's POV):

Something that I think is relevant: https://wob.coppermind.net/events/116-general-reddit-2017/#e2963 We've had Syl come back from being sort-of dead, we had Pattern coming back from even more sort-of dead, so Maya coming back from really sort-of dead would be "more of the same" and shouldn't be a surprise and as noted in the quote above, it does fit in with general themes in the Cosmere. There might well be some surprises in the details though.

According to Shallan at the end, Ialai had left Urithiru in disgrace (where to, I wonder?). I dunno what that means for the men under Ialai though and it's not clear how many survived either. Hmm. I guess the most likely scenario is that Ialai returns to the warcamps with the remains of House Sadeas. Not all highprinces moved into Urithiru IIRC.

Just a random thought... It occurs to me that it feels like there's a thematic similarity between Kaladin's 3 main moods and having/holding/using Stormlight. calm Kaladin: like Stormlight held in a gem stormy Kaladin: like Stormlight being held in the body - gives one a strong impulse to take action. gloomy Kaladin: that deflated feeling when you've consumed all your Stormlight. (I don't mean to imply anything more than there been a certain thematic similarity here. I don't mean anything deep by it either. I just thought it was an interesting similarity)

To put it simply, I was expecting more drama. It felt somewhat underwhelming compared to what seemed to have been promised. We did at least have some inner conflict, self-reflection and various consequences but it felt like there could have been more drama. It seems unlikely that this will be significant in the next book either. It might not be completely over but I very much doubt it'll be significant.

Just as a general comment to nobody in particular: I've had my own angst on this aspect of the book (much earlier in this thread) and am trying to get over it rather than too bogged down in negativity. So I'm intentionally not responding to certain posts depending on the content. That's a nice write-up. I think the good Shallan and Adolin sections are in Parts 1 and 4 (scenes between them are mostly absent in Parts 2 and 3 and maybe the less said about their romantic scenes in Part 5 the better). In Part 1 we saw Shallan and Adolin supporting each other in various ways and they really seemed to work well as a pair. In Part 4, Adolin does a great job of supporting both Shallan and Kaladin even while he's got his own problems to think about and feels way out of his depth. There's some significant (but understated) moments between Shallan and Adolin here as well that I enjoyed on my first read and also on re-reads. Back in chapter 2, Dalinar describes Adolin as "steady" and that's really what Adolin is. He can occasionally be overwhelmed but he's not a man of extremes. In Part 4 he properly listens to Shallan and does what he can to support her, even if it's just to stay quiet or give her a hug. I thought his POV scenes in Part 5 were great - at least there, the developments with Maya felt like a (mostly) natural progression from WoR and the rest of OB. I agree it's hard to know what to make of Shallan in the end here. If I read Shallan's last two POVs and try to forget the rest then it feels like it's supposed to be a high note with Shallan finally starting to properly get over her self-hatred. I'm sure we are supposed to question it as well. There's clearly more to come with Shallan and there's plenty of known internal and external challenges left for her to face. It's hard to say what our expectations should be for them as a couple - they are certainly very relaxed with each other. Dealing with the Ghostbloods (or the other highprinces) might cause strains between them if they come up with very different solutions. Shallan's inner problems seem likely to cause problems at some point but who knows how often and how much.

Is Adolin broken enough? Well, that's been asked and gotten RAFO'd: https://wob.coppermind.net/events/26-lucca-comics-and-games-festival/#e4573 I think it's likely that Adolin is broken enough but we'll have to wait and see. In Ym's POV it seems that the only dark thing in his past is an old murder. If we consider a possible (made up) "brokenness" scale and say that 5-10 is the "Goldilocks zone" where they're broken enough to form a stable Nahel bond but not so broken that they can't cope or not broken enough, then I think the likes of Kaladin, Shallan and Dalinar are around 10 on this scale while Adolin might be around 5 currently. Adolin took enough injuries in OB that he was healed by Renarin 3 times. He's had to deal with his mother being killed, his uncle being assassinated, his father being a drunk, his father possibly going insane. He was definitely suffering from stress about Sadeas (both before and after Sadeas was killed). He also thinks the worst moment in his life is when Sadeas abandoned the Kholins at the end of tWoK and he suffered from the death of many friends. At the end of OB he sees the devastation of his home and knows that he failed there. We don't really know what he was going through but he was clearly very stressed at the time when Shallan had dropped into the chasms - he felt he had abandoned her (to save Dalinar).

I think tWoK was the best constructed of the 3 so far - there was a nice balance between all the characters, the world-building was great, the ending was great and I don't think there was any significant flaw. I would say that WoR was more enjoyable (for me at least) but the balance between the characters wasn't so good and there were a few flaws. I found OB the least enjoyable to read and despite a number of great scenes there were just too many flaws in too many areas - there was too much plot that didn't really do much, the world-building felt lacking, the characters felt rather stifled and there were a lot of minor plot and character points that just fizzled out, were left dangling or were poorly developed. I actually felt depressed for a few days after reading it, rather than invigorated like I was with the previous books. This is despite the fact that my favourite character (Shallan) finally ended a book on a happy note - her scenes at the end didn't feel real enough to counter what her character had been through in the rest of the book.

Many thanks for finding that. As far as I understand it, Brandon does an initial outline for the "next" book once he's finished a draft of the current SA book. So he's probably already written an initial outline for SA4 and tweaked SA3 to include some foreshadowing. btw, sorry, but I don't have time to respond to your other posts right now. I would like to bring up one thing though. I've seen some posters suggesting that Wit is recommending against Shallan using personas but I don't see that: Shallan mentioned her personas on her first meeting with him in OB ("Aim for the sun") and he said nothing against using them. Here he talks about controlling them. He doesn't talk about assimilating them or not using them. For this bit at the end, this is why I've been arguing that it's so necessary that Shallan actually likes herself - I'm trying to keep an open mind about how dangerous it is for her to use her personas in general but it's definitely dangerous if she likes being her personas more than being herself, which would likely happen if she doesn't like herself or doesn't accept herself. Which is why it's important for her to forgive herself and be happy about being herself. So, as far as I'm concerned, Wit isn't inherently against Shallan using her personas. It makes me curious to see what Jasnah will do with the Heralds. She did talk about killing them at one point but I'm guessing that won't happen. But anyway, it would be interesting to see what Ash would say about all this. My guess would be that she knows about it (ie seen it in other Lightweavers before) but considers it to be risky, particularly without help.

Hmm. I'm pretty sure I read this a few months ago (about there being a year gap in-world before SA4 starts). Can't find the quote again though. It's a bit tricky to search for, unfortunately. Hopefully it's not my mind playing tricks on me...

That's nice to know I had the same struggle with Oathbringer as well, from Part 2 to the end. The ending was not satisfying to me on first read and still isn't despite it being notionally positive for Shallan in tone. The one thing I am certain of is that Brandon is going to explore this much further. What the ending will look like I have no idea. I don't feel good about her mental state at the end of the book either, which is one of my gripes about it. We either needed to see her being somewhat stable for longer and through challenges or to have third party confirmation that she is much better. I want to take a slight step back to make two points: for a Windrunner (or Skybreaker), flying is not inherently safe - if you run out of Stormlight while high up in the air you could very easily die. But nobody says "Never fly! It's too dangerous!". Likewise, for Elsecallers, they can enter Shadesmar fully but that's not inherently safe either. But nobody says "Never enter Shadesmar! It's too dangerous!". The point I'm trying to make here is that probably all or most Orders have some particular ability that is actually rather dangerous but has all sorts of benefits. Might personas be like this for Lightweavers? I have no idea but it's possible. Most people get very nervous very quickly when people start messing around with the mind. It's certainly a very different sort of danger. But... all Radiants are already messing around with their minds by bonding spren in the first place. Though the scale is different to Shallan's personas. The point I'm trying to make here is that it might be incorrect to start from the assumption that the personas must be avoided or integrated. It may turn out to be the case and that might be what happens but they also might persist for the rest of Shallan's life and this might turn out to be fine. To turn to your questions during Shallan's three-way conversation etc, I would like to refer to Shai and her Essence Marks: https://coppermind.net/wiki/Wan_ShaiLu#Essence_Marks When Shai uses them she really changes - not just mentally, but physically. So where are these alternative personalities "kept"? How does that really work? How much does this overlap with what Shallan is doing with her personas? I've no real idea but one obvious difference is that Shallan's personas can be active concurrently with Shallan herself rather than being one at a time. I doubt Brandon is going to give us a deep explanation of what exactly is going on with Shallan and her personas just yet though. If Shallan had a soul with a describable shape, would we see her personas as odd branches off from her main soul? Can her personas actually think in parallel to Shallan or is she shifting between them really fast or just imaging them? I agree that her personas are not "separate" - their memories are certainly not separate, for example. Veil can clearly access Shallan's deep memories. Shallan remembers her times as Veil. Shallan created Veil and Radiant based on her own memories and experiences. Radiant feels closer to an alternative Shallan while Veil feels much more distinct. It's hard trying to describe what exactly is going on with her personas and it's also very subjective. I'm sure we'll be discussing this for some time. But I'm certain we'll see her personas at the start of book 4, in which case she'll have had them for over a year. I'm sure we'll have lots of discuss and theorise until it comes out and I'll probably be writing much more on this subject. Perhaps. There's certainly more lurking in Shallan's childhood. Sure. It wasn't a serious suggestion. I think if Brandon was going to show the challenges of being a mother and warrior who is also critical to the cause then I don't think he'd take Shallan at this stage in her life. Here's something to consider: let's say that Kaladin has someone he loves deeply. How would that affect his ability to keep his oaths? It could cause all sorts of problems. On the other hand, it could be just what he needs for the 4th Ideal. The way Kaladin thinks, I don't think he would allow himself to have a relationship with someone under his command (though I bet some of the girls will try). I think your suggestion of a partner who can work and fight alongside him could succeed but is there actually someone like that out there who isn't already under his command? She would almost certainly have to be a Windrunner (Skybreakers are out). Well, with all the Oathgates opening there might be the opportunity for him to meet someone rather like himself - if something like what you suggest does happen she would probably not be someone from Vorin culture. (Do Horneater princesses fight?) I certainly agree that it goes both ways. I'm not sure I agree with your characterisation of Shallan here though. She's more than capable of showing her emotions to others - it's herself that she hides from. She often tries to help others as well. She has had to face her feelings of hatred for herself. Maybe what she can learn from him is other things - having a sense of mission, supporting and developing those under you, being a leader, etc. Good point on Rock. That could go in interesting ways, particularly with the Horneater Peaks having become strategically important (only stable gateway to Shadesmar). Is he ready to be a full time warrior though? I don't think Windrunners can fly with Plate unless it's their own creation either. Also, technically, Amaram stole Helaran's Shards from Kaladin and doesn't deserve to own them. I'm not sure how that would work out legally. But yes, it would be nice if Rock could (finally) give Shards to his people.

I've been all over the shop on this one. Here's my current thinking. Based on OB, I think that whatever Shallan's Final Ideal is will be a deep truth and could easily break her. Here's an interesting quote from chapter 77: This seems to be accurate. The interesting bit is Shallan making illusions off and on "for years" before saying the oaths. By this account, Shallan might have been Lightweaving since a much younger age than I had previously thought. I had been thinking that it was a few months between her starting to use Lightweaving and her confrontation with her mother. Instead, it looks like it was years of minor and infrequent Lightweaving with the oaths coming much later. The impression we get from Pattern's comments in WoR is that Shallan was already "cracked" before he ever met her, though spren and bonding feels quite weird as Syl seems to have been able to "feel" Kaladin well in advance (and from the Cognitive Realm). Either way, based on Kaladin's experience in tWoK, it would have been impossible for Shallan to Lightweave before Pattern came to the Physical Realm. So I think Pattern would have had to have been in the Physical Realm while Shallan was making illusions off and on for years. This also suggests that the Cryptics were way ahead of the other Radiant spren for some reason (ignoring the Skybreaker spren as a special case who never stopped bonding). We don't currently know when Shallan said the first oath but Pattern has confirmed that she has already said it. According to Pattern in WoR, Shallan was able to do sound in the past so based on Shallan's ability to do sound as a child (something Shallan completely failed to do until OB), I think we can say that a young Shallan had probably reached the 4th Ideal already. Which would also mean that Shallan has two different 4th Ideals - one said when younger and one said at the end of WoR. We don't know any of the Truths that she spoke as a child and I've not seen any hints in OB. Taking a slightly different approach: Pattern said he was the one chosen to be sent by the Cryptics. In other words, it was organised. My general impression is that spren often chose who to bond before properly entering the Physical Realm. So did the Cryptics choose little Shallan in advance as a group? That would be interesting if true. It would also be interesting to know if that is relatively normal for them or not. I also wonder about Pattern - why was he chosen? There's been some hints that he's not like a normal Cryptic and this difference is put down to his bond to Shallan. But what if there's more? For example, could he be a particularly young Cryptic? If so, maybe he chose a particularly young human to bond intentionally? Or maybe he wanted to bond a young human so that he could understand them more, having seen more of their life? Anyway, based on our limited knowledge of all this to date there seems to be a bunch of secrets in Shallan's younger years that still need to be revealed. What "cracked" her soul originally? What were her Truths as a child? The implications so far is that there's some nasty secret lurking inside Shallan that would be extremely hard for her to deal with. This might not be correct but that's my current impression at least. I have no idea how it could play out. For example, Shallan might be in a situation where she needs the Final Ideal in order to achieve her objectives. But, based on her experience in OB she would know that there would be a cost in doing so. So either she has to be faced with something so important that her desire to solve the problem outweighs her pain, or she has to prepare well in advance because she would need time to recover before really attempting the task. For example, to use your example of Adolin getting involved, let's say he's in some kind of pinch and Shallan wants to save him but cannot without the Final Ideal - so perhaps she forces herself to rush her final truth, puts aside her pain temporarily (maybe using a persona), saves Adolin and then collapses in a heap afterwards and takes a long time to recover. When I'd just read Part 1 of OB, I had wondered if Shallan would face Re-Shepir again at the end of the book and wondered if she might know this in advance and so would intentionally swear her Final Ideal at the end of Part 3 to give her time (Part 4) to recover. Well, that turned out to be wrong but we might get something like that in the next book or two. With regards to the details of Shallan's Final Oath, I'm betting that her brothers will be important somehow, though probably indirectly. In WoR (and even tWoK), there's scattered hints that Shallan knew she had killed her mother well in advance of her speaking the truth at the end. I've not yet seen anything like that in OB. If we start to see such hints fairly early on in the next book then it would probably be foreshadowing of her Final Ideal (her last and deepest Truth). For example, one idea I've had for Shallan (without any basis at all) is that perhaps she had an identical twin and that twin died long ago but the Shallan we know got mixed up with that twin - ie the real Shallan actually died and her twin assumed her place (by accident or design). If Shallan's brothers happen to name-drop the other twin in passing then that could stir memories within Shallan. But there's all sorts of possibilities.

It's tricky to evaluate these things properly. I agree that Jasnah is one of the most knowledgeable about Radiants in general but I have no idea how complete or accurate her knowledge is. For example, she didn't know what Truthwatcher spren look like until chapter 53. That's fairly basic I would think. I have no idea how close Jasnah is to getting Plate. I'm not sure it would be accurate to say that she is the "most accomplished" (apart from Skybreakers) either, but she's probably very close. Where Shallan at is certainly very rare: https://wob.coppermind.net/events/78-shadows-of-self-boston-signing/#e5470 This is of course not to say that Jasnah isn't as far as Shallan. I just don't know. I think it wouldn't be a surprise if different Orders got Plate at different stages. Some Orders might not even get plate "automatically" for example. The Winderunners and Skybreakers seem more combat orientated and it wouldn't be unreasonable for them to get Plate earlier than other Orders. Kaladin gets a big sparkly light show and a big dose of Stormlight each time he progresses but Shallan doesn't (and Lift doesn't seem to either). So even if Kaladin immediately gets Plate on his next Ideal, Shallan might not get Plate immediately even on swearing her Final Ideal - she might need to do something more.