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Dalinar did promise to investigate his claims. Kaladin didn't believe him.

Note that the epigraphs are from a book written by a non-radiant centuries after the Recreance, so it may be a bit fuzzy. I took that as referring to their type of spren. Also, by my understanding of what spren are, I don't think the Stormfather could be killed like that. Spren are basically the product of people anthropomorphizing forces, and they can't truly be killed any more than the force they're associated with. Bonded spren personify the oaths, but the Stormfather personifies the Highstorm, and while there is a Highstorm and humans to personify it, I don't think he can die.

What I gather is that Dalinar actually did a quite thorough investigation, and found nothing. He mentions no fewer than seventeen witnesses of varying rank and eye color testifying that Amaram killed a Shardbearer. Kaladin accused him of multiple murder, abuse of power, and false testimony, and provided no corroborating evidence. I think Dalinar decided to try that plan because Amaram sat out the duel, not because of Kaladin's public accusation.

I think he pulled in more stormlight than his weakened bond could support surviving the fall, and Syl overstressed herself letting him access it.

The impression I got from comments about inevitability and what Syl said after the bond started degrading is that the KR found their oaths trapping them in a contradiction. No matter what they did, they would violate their ideals and kill their spren. So they broke their oaths by quitting instead of breaking their oaths by killing. I'm rather firmly convinced that Surgebinding does not cause Desolations. Jasnah quite clearly states that the spren are returning because the Desolation threatens their existence as well. Also, given what Syl says about intelligent spren and the Honorblades, Desolations predate nahelbonds. Nalan appears to have the causation backwards.

Didn't Navani's notebook explicitly discuss the form of spren captured by fabrials?

Personally, I am thoroughly unconvinced that the Diagram is referring to the present Radiants when saying that. It's pretty clear the Diagram does not predict the precise identities of the present Radiants. By context from prior epigraphs from the same segment, it's probably talking about either the Unmade or the Heralds. So I guess it could actually be referring to Renarin's spren betraying Odium. This is patently false. He was responsible for providing the countdown, convincing Dalinar to move into the Shattered Plains, kill the Parshendi before they completed the Everstorm song and thus weakened it, and locate the Oathgate. Absent his intervention, the Parshendi would have been able to strike the Warcamps with the completed Everstorm song, transformed their Parshmen, and likely obliterated the entire Alethi army in a single stroke. His precognition has already literally saved the world. Well, it is a trait of Moelach. But it's also a trait of Endowment, Preservation, and Cultivation for sure, most likely Honor, and probably other Shards as well.

Honestly, I think he might actually have been correct that he could convince people, although clearly he was unable to convince his guards. Eugenics programs have gotten popular support in the past, and people have been convinced to die or commit suicide for a grand cause. So it's not impossible that he could have done it. Alternately, it might be a matter of how he goes about things. The Diagram calls for getting people to act in a way consistent with its goals without knowing about it instead of convincing people to act in accordance with it by persuading them its goals are correct. He might not be able to understand what will convince people to change their goals. As for the Diagram itself, I feel like it contains a plan that could have worked when it was originally written if carried out promptly and effectively. The abstract of the plan seems to be to destroy the leadership of other nations so Taravagian winds up leader of the entire world, to gather the Radiants to his service, and to destroy the Parshendi before they could transform, which apparently wouldn't stop the Desolation but would likely delay and weaken it. But he's so far failed at every one of those steps; Dalinar lives and has control of the Alethi, he doesn't seem to have any loyal Radiants, and he needed to get the Alethi to launch a major offensive two years earlier, the last time the weather would permit it. Yeah, it seems to operate on similar principles. He seems to have predicted that surgebinders will show up but not their identities, and they've been seriously throwing off his predictions. Mathematical modelling is better for predicting groups than individuals, and a number of very critical events got decided by a handful of people.

Also, I don't think the stick was bright enough to comprehend her arguments.

Shadesmar has a cold sun, so that's not it.

"Fire" "I am a stick" "A change from stick into fire is within standard parameters for state transitions as perceived by locally applicable cultural contexts"

I went through the epigraphs on the coppermind and commented on them in light of the new information in Words Of Radiance. Note that preview post is on the fritz, so the formatting might be messed up. Death rattles We don't seem to have any particular new insight on the letter aside from the new letter. The Notebook

Worth noting that when Kaladin grabbed that helm, it drained his own stormlight, probably because the gems are in the chestplate. Also, Adolin took a direct lighting strike in his plate, and it shrugged it off with no trouble. That's probably what it was originally for.

Apparently when they're bonded to voidspren, that pretty thoroughly overrides their will, so any that are unbonded in the Everstorm are going to get turned into voidbringers. However, the Parshendi discovered some method to transition into dullform from their voidbringer forms, so it might be possible to rescue some of the transformed ones by repeating that. But it's probably fairly difficult because Eshonai couldn't get enough control to do it.

The epigraphs are pretty clear that each order has varying levels of strictness in the Ideals.

We think that's Lerasium. He's still looking for the gemstone given the phrasing of the letter.

Renarin apparently hears his Shardblade scream when he touches it. I don't think someone bonded to a voidspren would do that. Also, his precognition was a major motivation for the offensive that found the Oathgate.While it did leave the army exposed to the Everstorm, it would have happened eventually anyway.

Yeah, that was obviously unworkable. It's going to be less than a month before the Everstorm hits the tower, and there's no explaining that away even disregarding the witnesses.

Eshonai bravely going out into the Highstorm in a heroic effort to save her people and subsequently getting her soul eaten.

The coming of the Shardspear. Dalinar blocking a Honorblade with his bare hands The long-awaited "The brightlady has a Shardblade?" Dalinar giving speeches. A lightning bolt getting thrown at Adolin and him tanking it, as his Shardplate served its original intended purpose of protecting against Voidbringers. Dalinar bonding Stormfather. Nightblood! He's back!

Yup. The bridge collapsed because it had an emergency release lever so you could collapse the bridge if the enemy seized the opposite side and began crossing. Also, I think that was a chull-pulled bridge in any case, not the one they were carrying.

It has been quite a long time since Shards were in ready supply, but on the other hand Roshar had been hastily uplifted to the Bronze Age during the prior desolation, so their military technology seems to have advanced a reasonable degree since then. Also, their medical knowledge is a bit spotty; they don't seem to have much of a grasp on chemistry. Sure, they have painkillers and antiseptics, but apparently only by using naturally occurring ones. Even Dalinar's surgeons don't have the capacity to synthesize anything and we've seen no evidence of sophisticated methods of distilling the active ingredient of knobweed sap or similar. That would fit very well with lacking gunpowder.

Brandon has previously stated he's not much for "technology levels". Roshar's medicine is more advanced than Earth's medicine in Earth's pre-gunpowder era.

I got the sense that T fell afoul of literal-genieness, and what he got was the capacity for himself to stop the Desolations. However, that does not actually preclude the possibility of Dalinar being able to do so as well. So he inadvertently wound up working at cross-purposes with someone else going for the same goal. If he successfully performs all the actions instructed by the diagram, it will end the desolations and save humanity, but that doesn't make it the best plan, just one that would accomplish those goals that he had the resources to carry out and not necessarily even the only one. While he is fallible even with his intelligence, he asked for and apparently got the capacity to stop the Desolations, so therefore his boon must allow him to succeed in doing so. But it doesn't necessarily mean he actually will, or that the way he does so is the sort of way he was hoping for when he asked.

According to Jasnah, spren started coming back and giving people the ability to surgebind in reaction to an impending Desolation, so it seems this is a case of correlation != causation. I'd say that once voidspren became avaliable it was only a matter of time before someone tried to employ Stormform. Sure, the intense pressure of the war with the Alethi and hostile Surgebinding meant they were easy for Stormform-Eshonai to convince to try a mass transformation, but in peacetime the first Stormform would just need to be a bit more subtle and clever.