Ansalem

Yeah, the value of spheres is based on their usefulness in soulcasting. Emeralds are the most valuable because they're used to soulcast food. Diamonds are the least valuable because they're used for quartz. I don't know if it's been explained precisely how it works with the fabrials. It seems like the soulcaster draws stormlight from nearby gems and spheres as needed but the only fabrial we really see used much is a fake so it's difficult to know for certain. The value of spheres might just be because they're cut from the same gemstones but soulcasters might not actually use them. My memory about the explanations is fuzzy so I'm not sure. I do know that's where sphere values come from, though.

Jasnah entered the room the moment Shallan was allowed visitors and Kabsal followed shortly after. But it was at least a few days before she was allowed visitors.

Spheres are gemstones, not metal. I would've chosen the strange metal of the Shards and the keyhole of the Oathgate for that example.

I think that was a big part of it. But I also think it was discovering her competence for herself through independence. In WoK she marveled at her new-found freedom in going to seek out Jasnah but she wasn't really all that free at all. She left dependency in one place to seek out dependency in another. Her life was still being directed by the goals of other people. It wasn't until after she was forced to make her way on her own that she really started to come to accept herself. The Ghostbloods were a big part of that but not the only part, I think. Mostly I think it was the fact she thought she was the only person in the world who could do what needed to be done that really pushed her to change. Her separation from Jasnah was probably really good for her. If Jasnah had been with her the whole time, Shallan could have continued to rationalize away her repressed memories, but since she was the only one available she had no choice but to face them. It was either face herself or let doom befall the world.

That and an astronomer interlude would be awesome. Roshar's moons are freakishly weird as well. I wonder if any scholars are studying them. I know I would be. Well, let's be honest, I would be 9th or 10th nahn at best.

I kind of feel like the world would be a much better place if the in-world Way of Kings had been written in the real world instead of The Art of War and people put as much stock in it as they do that book.

That's beside the point because you clearly have some information wrong. So, have you read Words of Radiance yet?

That's Talenelat (or Talenel or Taln). There's also Taravangian, king of Kharbranth in case it wasn't already hard enough to keep track of.

Tanavast is the man who held the Honor Shard, also known as the Almighty in Vorinism. He is dead, though, which means when Kaladin says "honor is dead" it's more true than he realizes.

I was always under the impression that you only see him if he wants you to but I'm not sure. But those times people see him it seems time stands still for them because they can stand freely inside the storm and then when he leaves the storm comes back in full force again. I could just be misinterpreting it though.

Before I reply, let me ask, have you read Words of Radiance yet? If not I suggest you do so first because you're opening yourself up to lots of spoilers here. As for the Cosmere, Roshar is not the Cosmere, it's one planet in the Cosmere. The Cosmere is a whole galaxy with myriad different worlds and none of the things you're talking about are present on any of those worlds other than Roshar (unless someone brought some over from Roshar, but we haven't seen that happen yet).

Those 3 things are all specific to Roshar, not the Cosmere. None of the other worlds have any of those things as far as we know. Plus it's actually 2 things because soulcasting is a type of surgebinding, it's the Surge of Transformation. Everyone who can soulcast on their own is a surgebinder. The soulcaster fabrials were made by science to mimic that particular Surge. And you might argue that it's actually all just 1 thing because both surgebinding and shards come from the Nahel bond of the Knights Radiant. All surgebinders are also shardbearers by default except in special cases. All of the shards were originally the weapons and armor of surgebinders. The shards held by ordinary people are just scavenged relics of the Lost Radiants, they weren't a thing before the Recreance.

Yep, this is what I was referring to. It's a pretty major plot point in the book is why I was asking.

I feel strange asking this because I think simply asking it might be a potential spoiler, but... have you read Words of Radiance?

Just because he has difficulty killing doesn't mean he isn't super powerful. Harmony has difficulty acting at all and yet he is the most powerful being in the whole known Cosmere currently. I think it's safe to say Hoid is the most powerful non-Shard being in the Cosmere. He has artifacts and access to powers from many different Shardworlds, more than any other being we know of so far, plus whatever he started with from Yolen. He could kill basically anyone if he weren't restricted and his restrictions seem to be self-inflicted, possibly even psychosomatic. Give his powers to someone else and that person probably could win any fight other than against a Shard, I think. It might turn out there is someone more powerful than Hoid, but if there is I don't think they've been mentioned yet.

I think Hoid was a failed attempt to artificially create a new Shard or maybe a new Adonalsium. Don't ask me why, it just popped into my head and I like it. Could explain his mysterious powers, though, and maybe why he's "spiritually blind" if he's an artificial construct. I was just thinking of the quote where he mentions if Odium finds him he would become a fractured soul, which made me think of Adonalsium's shattering. Since that's basically what Odium has done to the other Shards yet it's been confirmed that Hoid isn't holding a Shard of Adonalsium (which doesn't necessarily mean he isn't holding an artificial Shard). His Intent is obviously Meddling. Perhaps the 17th Shard were the organization that created him and now they're trying to reign in their Frankenstein's Monster, so to speak. Wild speculation is fun.

That's a good point. I do think they're pretty small, though I can't remember why I think that. When I said "perpendicular" I was really imagining a sort of diagonal spiral because if it were truly perpendicular the moons would always be dark, I think, or mostly eclipsed at least and they wouldn't rise above the horizon. A spiral in the sense that it moves along the same path across the planet but rotates as the planet orbits the star, in order to always be lit the same way and in the same positions in the sky year-round. But you're right I don't think that's necessary now. I don't know where in the sky they move, are they ever directly overhead? Either way I think you're right, they could be in almost any orbit other than parallel or directly perpendicular. If they don't spiral like that, though, they should be in different places in the sky throughout the year. But they could still be relatively regular enough to tell time by I think. edit: Well, actually they could be perfectly perpendicular, it depends on where the continent is located on the planet what that would look like. For a second there I started to wonder if maybe Roshar is rolling along its orbit like Uranus does but then I reminded myself to not be a crazy person. Yeah that's basically what I was thinking about. Or it could be something Cultivation is doing or Honor did. Maybe even Odium for unknown reasons. It's said that each moon is related to each Shard but that could easily just be mythology or coincidence.

I think they almost have to be put there artificially. He does say that the orbit is unstable which tells me that it could actually be that they are orbiting slowly and backwards. But if that's the case then Odium could simply wait for the inevitable destruction of Roshar. It also means that either the planet, the moons, or both are very new in astronomical terms. It could also be one of the other two possibilities I suggested. They could be orbiting at twice the speed the planet rotates, that could definitely be unstable because it means they're probably very close to the planet which is bad for gravity reasons. Could also be the spiral north-to-south orbit I mentioned, which would be awesome, but it's just a variation on the double-speed orbit. They would still have to be very close and the spiral itself would have to be unstable, the planet must have a crazy axial tilt wobble. None of the possibilities are very good in the long term. If Odium were a patient Shard he could just wait and not bother with Desolations, though I suspect his nature compels him to act. He is effectively immortal though so astronomical time scales shouldn't matter. Roshar is going to be destroyed by those moons in one way or another in the million to billion year range. I'm about 75% confident in that, knowing that the orbit is definitely unstable. Though if they were artificially placed they might also be artificially maintained. Who knows. I'm content to just say that they're really freakishly weird.

I'm having a hard time figuring out the moons. They move across the sky at the same time each night in the same pattern each night. We know this because of so many different references to using the position of the moons to judge the time. You wouldn't be able to do that just by looking unless the pattern never changed. You could if you memorized the lunar cycles for every single day, but nobody ever references any charts about it, so we can assume they just know by looking up. The problem with that is in order for them to always be at the same point at the same time every day they need to be in geostationary orbits which means they would always be in exactly the same spot and not move across the sky. Granted I'm not very good with imagining 3-dimensional motion like that, but I can't imagine any other speed working, it would have to be geostationary, otherwise you would get phase cycles. So the only 2 explanations I can think of are either: 1) they're always in the same position relative to the planet and the sun as you said, or 2) they speed up on one side and slow down on the other side somehow. Neither one of those makes any sense to me, honestly. If they're always opposite the sun relative to the planet then they're orbiting very slowly, slowly enough that they should just crash into the planet instead of orbiting. On top of that, if the planet is rotating along the same direction as its orbit (which is very likely) then the moons are orbiting in the opposite direction of the planet's rotation. That would cause gravitational dragging on the planet which would be slowing the rotation of the planet down which would cause all sorts of problems, not least of which it would throw off the pattern over time. If that's what's happening then eventually Roshar is going to end up tidally locked with its star, at least for a time, which basically means all life will be destroyed. The True Desolation doesn't even need to happen in that case, a tidally locked planet will eradicate all life all on its own. The True Desolation will seem like a minor nuisance by comparison. If the moons are on an orbit where they speed up and slow down on different sides of the planet then in order for them to always be visible at night it means that the faster orbit is on the night side of the planet. That means that the orbit moves farther away from the planet on the day side, in other words they move toward the sun. If that's the case they should just fly into the sun instead of coming back around at regular intervals. They would probably keep orbiting for a while but the planet shouldn't have any moons at all by now, unless the planet and/or moons are very new. They shouldn't have ever gotten onto that orbital path in the first place, though. Actually, I lied, I can think of 3 explanations but I wanted to explain away the others first since the third is what you suggested. So they aren't in geostationary orbit, they aren't in the same position relative to the sun, and they aren't changing speeds. The only possibility, seems to me, is that the moons are orbiting at exactly twice the speed the planet rotates. It has to be exactly twice the speed, though, otherwise the pattern would be off and you couldn't tell the time just by looking at their positions. You would get phase cycles. The likelihood of that happening with 3 moons is astronomical. Hell, the likelihood of it happening with just one moon is astronomical. I'm going to say that the moons were put in that orbit intentionally by one or more of the Shards, or maybe Adonalsium itself. It's possible, I think, just based on physics but insanely unlikely. Dunno why I felt like typing all that out after you already provided the obvious answer, I just never thought about Roshar's moons, they were just kinda there to me, and I love this sort of stuff. Mostly I wanted to point out why your wild speculation is the only possible answer and not wild at all. Although I could be missing something. Maybe one or more of the shards are just acting against gravity for whatever reason to keep them in an illogical orbit. Who knows. edit: I just realized, they might be orbiting the planet perpendicular to the planet's orbit. North and south instead of east and west. Would that work? I think it could. Actually yeah if they're full for the entire night then that has to be the case otherwise you would see all of the phases every night. They still have to be orbiting at either the same speed as the planet rotates or at twice the speed. I don't know if it's ever specifically mentioned whether they go through phases at night or how fast they move across the sky, though. What an incredibly strange orbit that would be. It would have to be a spiral orbit to avoid phases I think. My brain is breaking.

All kinds of Stormlight Archive spoilers are in this post. Plus a lot of speculation. (I probably should've made a separate post for this but eh, it fits here well enough... sorry about the lengthy rambling). The Parshendi aren't singing their own songs, they're singing the songs that are always there with or without them. Attuning is sort of like changing the station on a radio that constantly repeats itself. For example the way that Eshonai's meeting with the Five is scheduled to a particular part of the Rhythm of Peace. Presumably that means everyone knows ahead of time when the Rhythm of Peace will be at that part. This is also why any two Listeners singing the same song are singing in time with each other even if they don't know the other is singing. (It's also why they call themselves the Listeners and not the Singers). They aren't telepathic as Jasnah hypothesized, they're simply all listening to the same radio station. I don't think the natural songs they hear come with lyrics, just the music, although who knows it could be either way. They clearly sing lyrics to some songs but it's not obvious whether the lyrics are inherent or added to the music. Sort of how when they speak, their sentence follows the cadence of the Rhythm they're Attuning. It could be that all the Shards generate particular Rhythms that the Listeners can listen to. I don't think they all come from one Shard because then they would always have been Voidbringers, listening only to Odium's Rhythms. I doubt Odium would have a Rhythm of Peace, but Cultivation and Honor both could. Or perhaps Roshar itself has its own Rhythms that the Shards can influence, like if you cover up a speaker it'll distort the music, since there is reason to believe the Listeners were on Roshar before any Shards arrived, and they certainly weren't all in slaveform then. (I think it's clear that the Rhythms are at least in some way required to change forms and slaveforms are described as formless, the form with no Rhythms "where is their music?", though it's also clearly the spren that grant the forms so maybe they could change without Rhythms as long as there were spren?). Either way, that would explain why Eshonai describes the new Rhythms as being altered versions of the old Rhythms (Amusement becomes Ridicule, for example) rather than just being entirely new Rhythms. It would also explain why the voidspren are required before they can Attune Odium's Rhythms. The voidspren are what allow a Listener to hear the distorted Rhythms (or perhaps the spren are what causes the distortion). I wonder if Cultivation's spren would reveal other versions. For that matter, what would happen if a Listener somehow did bond one of Honor's spren? Are Honor's Rhythms still around? The Rhythms being natural to Roshar itself also explains why cymatics appears to have such a strong influence there, though that could've happened after the Shards arrived. And, finally, it explains why only the Listeners can hear the Rhythms, because they are the only race that is native to Roshar (presumably). Yeah, I like the second explanation best. The Rhythms were always a part of Roshar and the Shards react to them creating new versions. Listeners need to bond with Shard spren to distort the Rhythms and the distortion (or at least certain ones) somehow grants them powers. I wonder if any of the original Rhythms grant powers without the influence of a Shard (since it's been hinted that spren existed before the Shards arrived, presumably these are the Listener's spren, "they have their own spren"). If so that would mean there was a magic system on Roshar before Adonalsium shattered, it still exists in some form, and it relates to vibrations. If that's the case then it also means every Shard of Adonalsium would create its own Rhythms on Roshar, assuming they had their own spren. So here's where the wild speculation starts. I'm reasonably certain that it's been said there are 3 forms of magic on Roshar but not specifically stated what all 3 are. It's been assumed by basically everyone that these are Surgebinding, Voidbinding, and the Old Magic. Personally I think Surgebinding and Voidbinding are just opposites of the same magic system and the third magic is actually the Listener Rhythms, or more broadly cymatics in some way and what the Parshendi are doing isn't Voidbinding but more like Void Rhythms. The reason I say this is that (I could be remembering wrong but) I think that Brandon has said the smoky black stone Szeth gets in the beginning of WoK is like stormlight but not. That implies that Voidbinding would use that stuff instead of stormlight, and the Listeners clearly aren't using that, what they're doing comes directly from the Rhythms. I think it will be generated by the Everstorm and Voidbinders will start to show up who aren't Parshendi, though this leads me to wonder if this is the first Everstorm then how is Voidbinding known about? Perhaps the "voidlight" comes from something else, then, or perhaps it isn't actually the first Everstorm. Or it could be that Brandon doesn't consider the Old Magic to technically be a type of magic system for whatever reason. If I'm wrong then I'm going to venture a guess and say there are actually 4 forms of magic, not 3. If I'm right (big if, probably) then the Voidbringers are not Voidbinders, or at least the Voidbinders haven't appeared yet. The Voidbinders would probably join with the Voidbringers but I don't think the Parshendi are Voidbinding to summon the Everstorm, I think we haven't seen Voidbinding yet (maybe the creature in the vision in the Purelake was one or created by one though). If what the Parshendi are doing is Voidbinding then Voidbinding is apparently positive magic somehow, since they can apparently just do it at will with no apparent cost. It seems strange that Surgebinding would be negative or neutral and Voidbinding would be positive. But the Rhythms could inherently be positive and stay positive when they're distorted by Odium. The Rhythms being positive might even be why Odium chose the Listeners as his agents. Then again maybe for some reason Odium would create a positive magic... not sure why though. This also would make the Rhythms potentially the most powerful form of magic on Roshar, maybe even the most powerful we've seen in the Cosmere so far depending on which Shards were influencing them at the moment. But it also means it's restricted to Roshar and the Listeners would probably all be slaveform on any other world, which makes me sad. With all of that out of the way, I like the idea that the Oathpact was the way to prevent the Everstorm from building up by pushing the Investiture into the Heralds. However I think it would eventually have burst out even without the Parshendi summoning it directly because it doesn't make sense to me that the Rhythms are Odium's power even if I'm wrong about everything else. I think the Rhythms were just a convenient faucet for Odium but the dam would have burst eventually anyway.