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Note that Vasher apparently wasn't on the side of the Hallandren government at the time of the Manywar. He's called Kalad The Usurper, indicating he was probably involved in the revolt against the royal family. Plus, if he picked a side in the war it would be the one he thought was in the right. Also, assuming it actually took as intended, the beauty of the "Destroy Evil" command is that it won't harm innocents. When giving unrevocable orders to very powerful and potentially literal-minded things, you want safe ones.

Relatively unlikely, I think. I gather that Steelheart's first significant public action was conquering Chicago, in which he primarily targeted politically or economically significant institutions, and he didn't seem to go in for indiscriminate slaughter during the attack. It's specifically noted that he left rescue workers alone everywhere except the bank, so he clearly didn't see a need to maximize casualties. Overall, specifically targeting a school doesn't seem like his style; the children aren't a threat and serve as future subjects, and he prefers intimidation through displays of power rather than sheer bodycount.

I think it mostly comes down to the degree of power used, and intent doesn't inherently have much to do with it. It seems to me that it essentially makes Epics extremely arrogant and causes them to stop actually caring about other people except as a means to an end. Prof and Megan get so angry when they use their powers because they're forced to listen to complaints from someone they consider beneath them and can't simply kill him out of hand for annoying them.That apparently also affects their view of other Epics, given that Epics have actually tried to violently overthrow Steelheart on more than one occasion. It also explains why Epics go to the effort of running governments instead of extorting whatever they want; they feel they deserve to be worshipped as gods. That is not actually accurate. Conflux gifts his powers to Enforcement soldiers to let them power their equipment. His primary power seems to be generating electrical current, which can be used to charge things. I don't think that qualifies as gifting, since it can't be withdrawn and seems to act like perfectly normal electricity outside of his body. He didn't kill his wife by gifting but by insufficent forethought; he tried to power a microwave, and instead of going into the circuit the electricity proceeded to seek ground through a metal countertop and his wife.

It's worth pointing out that Galivar must have started recieving the visions for some reason. If the Desolation wouldn't have happened without him getting them, then they wouldn't have been triggered in the first place. The Diagram also says "The Desolation needs no usher", and the actual Diagram seems pretty highly accurate from what we can confirm, so I'm strongly inclined to believe it would have happened eventually somehow. For one thing, I don't think Stormform wouldn't have been attempted without the war. The Parshendi were apparently looking for new forms as it was, so they'd have found Stormform eventually. I can see how it would play out in peacetime: Venli would come to the leadership and say she's rediscovered an ancient form and would like to try it, there would be a big debate about its risks, and then Eshonai would stand up and volunteer to test it. She'd go out into the Highstorm, get forcibly transformed, and come back to tell everyone it's perfectly safe and the new form is pretty awesome. There wouldn't be a mass transformation without the war, but a steadily growing percentage would try stormform and stay in it permanently, eventually growing numerous enough to trigger the Everstorm. Incidentally, I suspect Eshonai was the first to take stormform (it's not what you'd call subtle) but Venli had rediscovered scholarform and shifted into that. That certainly sounds like a warning that scholarform has a strong tendancy to research things best left alone, and it probably has a close physical resembalence to nimbleform. There's no way Venli could have hidden new carapace and glowing red eyes for the entire gap between Highstorms, but she apparently did know more about stormform than she was willing to admit and went ahead with it anyway. Maybe she got bribed by an Unmade with an offer of knowledge about the other ancient forms. Importance isn't the only reason she was the one to do it. Even the standard forms have a strong influence on the minds of the Parshendi who take them, but Eshonai has practiced controlling their effects so she can fight in workform and focus on the big picture in mateform. She'd be much more able to resist any potentially hazardous emotional effects and give a reliable evaluation of the dangers of stormform than some random soldier, and I'm almost certain that the leadership would have rejected the experiment outright if she wasn't the one testing it. Unfortunately, stormform proved far more dangerous than expected.

I'm actually not entirely convinced universal Soulcaster fabrials even exist. For one thing, we're told there are non-universal Soulcasters, and Jasnah's Soulcaster is supposedly particularly attuned to the Essences of the stones installed. Plus, fabrials seem to have very simple interfaces that wouldn't readily permit Soulcasting any material. I suspect that the "universal" fabrials are just three separate specific fabrials welded together and the Ardents just use other Soulcasters to make different transformations and lie about it. I take the garnets as the strongest evidence for specific gem associations. Shallan's first Soulcasting used a garnet to create blood in preference to using the larger gems on the Soulcaster, and Jasnah went looking for a garnet specifically. While concealing her universal Soulcasting ability would be wise, she was also in quite a rush and there were no qualified witnesses. She could have just lied.

While we have no explicit statement that Highstorms were present during the Shadowdays, their presence is implied by the visions. The Midnight Essence vision village was constructed where a ridge would provide shelter from the Highstorms, and we have reasonable confirmation that the Dawncities, also protected by natural formations, were major population centers in the era. Additionally, the ecology of Roshar without Highstorms would be almost unrecognizable, but Dalinar never comments on it. While he's no scholar, he would notice things like the grass not retracting. It's quite possible they've gotten a good deal more severe, but they do seem to predate the Last Desolation.

It seems odd to me that the Recreance would result from a civil war. Even if the Radiants were disgusted by having to fight other orders, I'd expect them to want to bring down the rogue order before throwing down their weapons. Also, the encrypted Diagram epigraph mentions holding the secret that brought down the Knights Radiant, and for it to still be relevant to the reformed orders it's got to be something more substantial than treason by people thousands of years dead.

At least for the moment, it's going in a box. It drains stormlight far too quickly, and Syl says it has a dangerous lack of limiters. Dalinar might pick it up, because he's good at using Shardblades and doesn't presently have one, but I don't think it'll go to someone who doesn't have radiant powers that might allow them to at least somewhat control the drain rate. It might just sit around until a Herald shows up. However, it's also possible it'll serve as a last resort; lacking a mechanism to prevent dangerously high rates of Stormlight use translates to being able to dump all available stormlight into a single lashing instantly, possibly enabling the wielder to fling around even extremely heavily invested targets that would ordinarily be immune to direct Surgebinding attacks.

It's pretty strongly implied that the Bondsmiths did break their oaths, given how touchy the Stormfather is about bonding Dalinar. He likely survived by virtue of both power and being the highstorm spren. It's presumably not the Edgedancers, because Wyndle implies there weren't any spren of his type in the physical.

It's also possible that any KR could attract stories of being favored of the winds by surviving a Highstorm thanks to getting a Stormlight charge in the middle.

It's unsuprising the Diagram didn't predict Kaladin specifically. It wasn't produced via precognition, so it could only work on information Taravangian actually had. Also, it's most likely based on probabilities, and if those probabilities used are accurate the predictions based on them are far more likely to be correct with more instances. For instance, if people have a 1 in 1000 chance of becoming a Radiant, then for any individual the Diagram would predict they wouldn't, but would predict that a group of ten thousand contains about ten Radiants. Even on the grand scale, though, it isn't perfect. The number of factions in the Jah Keved civil war wasn't accurately predicted. Taravangian might have built in alternate scenarios, or he might be counting on his future self to adapt the plan on smart days.

1. Well, Vasher is on Roshar too; it's fairly plausible he made the jump himself. No idea why, though. 2. No, we know how he was made, and it's not the same. He does have similar properties, however. 3. Most probably, 4. Feed it with Stormlight; the Shards all come from the same source originally so it should be possible to fuel any system with the power of any Shard if you do it right. 5. He's much stronger 6. That would be an interesting philosophical question. However, he's got all the magic-related attributes of something with a soul.

I am quite confident that Nalan has reversed the order of causation here. We have clear statements that the spren are returning because of the impending Desolation, so they cannot be the reason it's coming. Also, if Surgebinding causes the Desolations, there's no good reason for it to happen more than once. Honor could have just made it impossible for humans to surgebind and grabbed the honorblades. The Diagram says, "the Desolation needs no usher" and we have no reason to doubt that.

According to Taravangian, they're spren. It's fairly likely they can bond with Listeners, though, since Yelig-nar has personally killed people.

Dalinar is probably going to go with the clean path. He's gone rather far with it to stop now. The wise move would be to decrypt the diagram and use it for reference purposes regarding the Unmade and suchlike.

I gather from Kasbal's big rant that the Ghostbloods are some form of hardline Vorin sect who probably would not get along with an avowed atheist. They may believe Jasnah will either defect to the Voidbringers or arrogantly try and fail to overcome them without divine aid.

On the Stormform power level: I suspect this is partially a matter of numbers. Sure, armored Radiants do pretty well against them, but there are a lot of Stormform. Even the ones already created probably outnumbered the old Orders by at least ten to one, and most of them are inactive. Plus, a big chunk of them were occupied generating the Everstorm and they still were a huge problem for the Alethi army. Also, this was the first time most of the Stormform used their powers in combat, and they clearly had a lot of trouble controlling their lighting effectively. They could be a lot nastier with some practice, and the Everstorm song also shows they can combine their powers. Plus, I think the Plate itself provides evidence it's intended to fight Stormform. When Adolin sees a lightning blast, a portion of his visor turns opaque to block it out. That's clearly an intentional feature to protect the wearer's vision, implying it was a frequent problem. Radiant powers do produce a lot of light, but it doesn't seem like they leave blinding afterimages.

The difference between a free worker and a slave in this case is that the free worker gets to leave if he wants. They might not be able to find other jobs, but they have the choice to try. Plus, they could sign up as spearmen; always room for new recruits in an army at war. I do agree there's really no reason they'd pass up a firemark a week (plus likely room and board) but they should have the option to decide that themselves.

The Diagram's plan seems to be to create power vacuums everywhere so Taravangian can step in and fill them. So the plan can't work if someone else unifies the Alethi. I'm not sure that the plan automatically preempts every other method of saving the world, but it can't be carried out if Dalinar unites the world. I'm actually willing to believe that when created it was the best plan for fufilling the stated conditions, but it makes someone with relatively little power at the beginning the centerpiece of the plan, necessitating brutal action and major sacrifices to accomplish. I gather that it's a probabilistic prediction. There are random elements involved, but you can predict the aggregate outcome of a large number of random events with a fair degree of certainty. However, it should also be pointed out that Taravangian has himself noted that it's actually wrong; the Diagram predicted a different number of factions in the civil war. But they can't scrap and replace the whole thing, so they're sticking with it and praying everything works out. I also don't know that it's very open to interpretation; the segments we get seem pretty clear. However, it's also got a massively elaborate and multilayer encryption scheme, so they can't actually read the thing properly. It seems that it can't predict the behavior of individuals well if at all, so when everything rests on Shallan locating the Oathgate or the like the Diagram does not predict the outcome. Presumably it holds together for international politics because Taravangian knows the players and can guess at what they'll do with acceptable reliability. I have two ideas for what is up with the encryption scheme. First, it might be for space and time reasons because he needed to finish it before his intelligence reverted. Theoretically, if you had a string of text, you could embed several messages by taking every odd letter, or every even letter, or every third letter, and have each of those give a distinct intelligible message. Actually, you could take a completely random string of text and then generate encryption schemes that give any number of intelligible messages. Normally that would be completely insane, but he was a super-genius at the time and could potentially have thought up the encryption schemes faster than he could write cleartext. The ciphers we've seen directly are computationally pretty simple and can be explained quickly, so he could get a lot more information down by doing that, especially if he also used some basic character-shift ciphers. Second, he could potentially have predicted exactly when each segment would be decoded and how his future self and subordinates would react, and the timing of the information release is itself part of the plan. I am honestly not too happy with this theory, though. First, it seems a bit too precise compared to the known predictions; it'd go off the rails if they broke portions in the wrong order, although I suppose a nested hint structure or orders to work on certain segments first could handle that. Secondly, though, that seems needlessly convoluted. Everyone in on the Diagramist conspiracy is happily following the plan, so if he secretly has a better plan I don't see why he couldn't just write that instead. Come to think of it, though, there's at least one entity that might be reading the Diagram who wouldn't like the plan: Odium. Now, there's simply no way the ciphering can stop Odium from accessing the information; it can be broken by humans so it cannot possibly stop a Shard with the same starting point if he works at it. But if the real plan isn't written down in the first place, Odium can't read it. However, the heart of Voidbinding is attempting to divine the future, so I'm not sure how hiding the plan would help if Odium can foresee the outcome anyway with his magic system. Maybe it produces an infinite precog recursion because the outcome of the plan is tied to what Odium does about the plan. They've certainly got to foul his precognition somehow; there's no winning against someone who is vastly more powerful than you and can predict your every move before you even decide to make it. Maybe Cultivation can generate a Shard-scale shadow cloud.

In Rome, which had a somewhat similar system, it was not uncommon for people to free slaves and then hire them. Actually, pretty much the entire early imperial bureaucracy consisted of ex-slaves of the emperor. That seems like it'd be a reasonable enough solution.

It carries an implicit assumption that darkeyes need lighteyes to take care of them, particularly since she isn't outright freeing them. I think she is doing the sufficently right thing given the circumstances and cultural context (I'd say free and hire on as workers, but slavery is accepted in Vorinism and she's treating them well) but there is the question of whether she's doing it because of a paternalistic attitude. She might be evaluating this situation correctly but for the wrong reasons. Personally, I think she's bought into the idea that lighteyes are favored by the Almighty and must use their gifts responsibly to lead and protect the darkeyes, but mostly because she's never been seriously pressed to consider the issue.

I gather it's not illegal but people are not fond of it. Plus, the Alethi do have laws regarding treatment of slaves that might be stricter than Tvlakv wants to deal with. Also, I got the impression that a fairly large number of slaves are Alethi; I can't imagine many people are happy to be reminded that they could potentially end up in those cages too. Overall, the Alethi seem to run a fairly respectable system of slavery, but it's still slavery. It's not a bad deal, except for the bridgemen, but it's one people are forced to take. But honestly, they seem to be better off than Arleon serfs and definitely better than Skaa.

There may have been legal complications to freeing them outright. As for pay, bridgemen made two clearmarks a day, and slave wages are apparently usually half normal wages, so the slave bridgemen made one clearmark a day. According to the sphere value table on the wiki, that would come out to half a firemark a week. So the spending money Shallan is giving them is pretty respectable.

I'm pretty sure there's some form of material conversion to an unusual and harmless material. Lots of materials you wouldn't think of as combustible can cause a dust explosion if broken into fine enough pieces, but that doesn't seem to have ever been a problem. Granted, I'm not entirely sure steel is on that list, so it might not be a problem in Newcago.

Eh, I don't mind that plan too much. I mean, exterminating the ones in the camps would definitely be the smartest move, and arguably ethical because they're highly likely to kill each and every one of those particular Parshmen later anyhow, but that would be utterly at odds with the First Ideal, and in the grand scheme of things it doesn't really matter. There are a lot more Parshmen in the world, and persuading anyone except Taravangian to take action before the Everstorm arrives is unlikely to happen. Abandoning them in the camps means they won't be inside Urithiru when they get converted. People have suggested keeping them indoors during the Everstorm, but the first pass is going to wreck quite a lot of buildings designed to resist storms from the other direction and we aren't entirely certain the conversion effect from the Everstorm will be blocked by structures anyways; the standard conversion requires being outside in a Highstorm, but that won't necessarily apply to the Everstorm. They could try converting them into Parshendi in the hopes that will shield them from getting converted, I suppose, but I'm not sure they have the expertise or time. Rlain is familiar with the process but there's no particular reason to believe he knows exactly how to prep the trapped spren, and it's clearly not as simple as grabbing any spren and stuffing it into a gemstone for a unique form or the Parshendi would have a lot more forms known already. It's apparently also somewhat time-consuming to gather and prep them. I'm also not sure converting them like Parshendi would even be possible. The transformation apparently relies on mental focus and emotions to synchronize with the spren, and I am not sure slaveform is up to the task. My big "Argh, you idiot!" moment was Kaladin at the end of the duel. I mean, I actually initially thought that it was a great chance to get a trial by combat against Amaram because I didn't realize Darkeyes were actually forbidden from dueling, so it seemed a reasonable idea to piggyback on Adolin's challenge and if Amaram tried to back out he could pointedly ask why a man who supposedly claimed his Shards by killing the previous owner was so worried about single combat against a non-shardbearer. But as he was talking I got a sinking feeling that he was over-doing it.