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It was made from a melted-down Inquisitor spike, according to WoB. The battle left a bunch of spikes free for the taking.

Dalinar gives the best speeches.

It reminds me of Sigzil talking about criminals getting tied to cliffs for greatshells to eat. Apparently Aimians have some poorly-understood capacity to alter their own bodies, so the Reshi think he can escape at any time. This may or may not be true and may or may not apply to Siah Aimians.

I suppose it's possible, but it seems a bit large-scale. The Plains were apparently shattered by a single massive impact in the vicinity of the Oathgate. Even for an entire Radiant order, that would be pretty difficult. Though I suppose it's possible they managed to fool the other orders into helping out, which would also explain why they'd foreswear their oaths instead of hunting down the Skybreakers.

I do believe he got what he asked for. But there are two ways his request diverges from what he wants. 1. Capacity merely means he is able to save the world. It does not necessarily mean he will succeed in doing so. 2. Although this is a bit into fuzzy phrasing, both in interpretation and the exact original request, I think the Nightwatcher granted the capacity for Mr T specifically to save the world. So I personally think the Diagram was the boon, but both issues have come back to haunt him. Firstly, the Diagram is off-course because he's failed to complete steps it called for. Secondly, it's a plan where he saves the world, and in order to do so he needs to undermine other people who could potentially save the world.

I think he has encountered the classic ill-considered wish problem. He asked for the capacity to save the world, but what he wanted was for the world to be saved. Those are not exactly the same thing, and he just might find out what the difference is the hard way.

He summoned the Shardblade, so he was bound to it. Even if it wasn't "his", he'd have to voluntarily give it up. It's highly unlikely that the Shardbearer was anyone except Heleran, and the Shardbearer's death was absolutely confirmed; his Shardblade manifested and his Shardplate detached. He might have gotten resurrected, but I can't see why.

Uh, actually it historically was pretty common to fight with a one-handed sword and a knife or similarly-sized weapon in the offhand. Usually the secondary weapon would mostly be used to parry, but I imagine that people occasionally got a chance to stab with it. Dalinar actually uses a sword-and-knife style of Smokestance in one of the WoK visions. Adolin never dual-wields, but he sometimes used his Shardblade one-handed and punched with his offhand. Admittedly, I think that's mostly a style for unarmored people. Armor means not having to parry much. I will agree that there is no reason to dual-wield standard Shardblades. They're simply too big and clumsy to effectively control two of them at once. However, I could see an ambidextrous knight with two live shardblades making good use of them by doing sword-and-knife and rapidly switching which is which.

The Stonewards and Windrunners appear to deploy together, since both of the WoK visions with Radiants involved both orders. From the first vision they show up in, I think the Stonewards have some form of reasonably reliable teleportation that lets them match the Windrunner's strategic mobility, even if it's too expensive in stormlight to flicker around the battlefield.

I gather that the symbolhead form of the Cryptics is what they look like while hanging out in Shadesmar, so Elhokar being able to see them doesn't necessarily imply there are more of them in the physical realm. They're probably avoiding Syl. I'm pretty sure it's because of the rivalry between honorspren and their love of pure truth and Cryptics and their love of lies that start from truth.

On the other hand, the Honorblade apparently eats stormlight very, very quickly. Given that Kaladin already has trouble with burning through his stormlight reserves too fast, I don't think it would be a good idea to give it to him. However, extra surges or not, Dalinar is an experienced Shardblade wielder who cannot use a normal Shardblade.

No. Quite aside of any other considerations, Deneth's sister was the one who actually Awakened Nightblood; Vasher apparently isn't able to Awaken non-organics. Only the original Awakener can recover Breath from an Awakened object, and Vasher killed her.

Jasnah might have been worried that she was only pretending to be spoiled, selfish, and lazy, much like why Kaladin kept glaring at Shallan. She apparently changed her mind about removing her. However, I also recall Navani implying the queen was at least moderately qualified at political maneuvering. I doubt the riots were part of the Diagram's plan. They're certainly terribly ill-timed; riots and the Everstorm combined could practically level the city. Even if the Diagram didn't predict the timing of the Everstorm, it just doesn't quite seem to fit the plan to set off riots in Kholinar. The most likely outcome if they hadn't gone to Urithiru would be forcing portions of the army to return to restore order, disrupting efforts to destroy the Parshendi without leaving a good chance for taking over. If anyone planned this it'd be Odium or the Sons of Honor, but on the balance of things I feel like this is simply a devout Ardent with phenomenally bad luck.

Stormwardens are regarded as shifty, but I didn't get the impression they started within the lifetime of any of our viewpoint characters.

I could see Jasnah abandoning a boatload of innocents she couldn't save. I figure she woke up, determined the Ghostbloods had sent in overwhelming force, and did an emergency jump to escape. I took what she said on returning as indicating her ability would bring her back some fixed period into the future and she was in too much of a hurry to set it carefully. If she'd awoken when the boat got Soulcast, I would have expected her to either make a stormlight-enhanced swim or Soulcast herself a raft, since she wound up out of contact for quite a while.

I think he started off as a hero, but the strain of it destroyed him. Everyone "knew" he was a murderer, and treated him as such. He also struggled to keep the family together even though his children also blamed him, and he needed to manage the family finances without being able to read or write or trust anyone to do it for him. He couldn't take it, and began to lash out, driving people further away and pushing him deeper into rage and depression. I figure she took Pattern for a Voidbringer and assumed Shallan was possessed. Seeing as how she got killed by an eleven year-old Surgebinder, she probably wasn't a Skybreaker. Either she'd know how to beat a Surgebinder or she'd be able to call for backup that could.

Probably the Parshendi should have tried to talk Dalinar out of it and gone to Jasnah to get her to help convince him to put things on hold.

Yeah, I expect this is going to come back to haunt them eventually. Then again, there are literally thousands of people who wanted Sadeas dead, so the murder might not get associated with Dalinar. I mean, there's the bridgemen, his other slaves, every single survivor of the Tower battle, probably everyone who went in for the Everstorm battle and would really have liked another six armies backing them up, and probably a lot of additional people not in the above catagories.

I suppose, but the main mental issue for the Alethi leadership appears to be the Thrill, which has been confirmed to be due to an Unmade. Also, Dalinar resumed going for gemhearts and using his blade heavily for a while, and that didn't seem to have any ill effects.

Has anyone else except Dalinar even gotten to their second Ideal yet?

That would be why Taln is a legendary hero worshiped as a god and Kaladin is not.

Syl implied eating through stormlight like that was an attribute of Honorblades, though, and Szeth seems to think it's a Honorblade. I think the Honorblades are incredibly draining for their user, but the Heralds are strong enough to withstand the drain and outmuscle their Radiants. Alternately, the lack of safeties preventing use of dangerous amounts of stormlight (dangerous to mortals, maybe) also means they could use any amount of stormlight in a single lashing. Also, it's clearly impossible to bond Honorblades in the same way as live shardblades, because Honorblades do not gain their power from spren.

I think it's just the first time Kaladin used a Basic Lashing on something else. Always must be a first time, and I never got the impression lashing something else was different in principle from lashing yourself.

Well, it absolutely was murder. That said, Sadeas needed to be stopped and legal methods of removing him from power had been pretty thoroughly attempted and exhausted.

Kaladin himself won't be keeping the Honorblade; it chews through stormlight very quickly. My money is on it going to Dalinar, since he doesn't have a Shardblade. If they want it back they'll need to storm Urithiru.