VoltCruelerz

So to summarize, Maybe-Taln is Tanavast and Actual-Talenelat is Mraize. That actually seems to make a good deal of sense and lines up with the comment made by the herald chasing Lift that Yaezir (Azish name for Tanavast) is drooling.

That looks great. Shadesmar, the obsidian castle in the clear lake, Urithiru.

Fabrials involve trapping a spren inside a gemstone. Presumably that spren's life is what allows it to be summoned at will, giving some sort of life force. Not really sure how that interacts with the 10 heartbeats resurrection thing. It does probably relate to why Radiants hear screams from them.

Perhaps I was unclear.. Humans: sentient and sapient Dolphins: sentient only Santhids: (probably) sentient only

Sentient just means self aware in this context. Dolphins are sentient for instance. They're not sapient though. Presumably santhids aren't either.

That... that sounds really interesting. So reclaiming them would mean what, kicking Odium off Yolen? I thought he was on Braize.

The highstorm thing would make sense. As for the eye, I'm not sure there is a valid reason. It doesn't have binocular vision and it's underwater, so the vision range is limited. It is probably still a predator, perhaps using sonar or something and relies on ambushes. With tentacles that size though, it would have to be something of an alpha predator hunting down slow-moving but large prey. That implies it goes after heavily armored prey, so it probably has a hard beak or maybe it uses stormlight to drill through the prey's carapace or something. Given that, I'd guess it keeps its tentacles up near the surface when lying in wait, perhaps bunched up at the surface. When it sees prey coming, it lunges down and wraps around and pulls itself to its meal before it can escape. That also explains the hard shell on top since the prey would probably try to whack it off by beating on the top of it. As for why it had its tentacles all the way extended when it was at the boat, the symbiotic fish that follow the boat might have an easier time cleaning off its tentacles when they're extended than when they're bunched up.

Santhid http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/stormlightarchive/images/9/94/Sketchbook_santhid.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20140709024020

I don't think so either. I think he's just considering the perspective of everyone else. Bridge 4 survived, but made everyone else a target.

Even so, I think he just has to trust it and trust that things haven't degraded. He has no way of knowing if they have or not. For all he knows, it might need to get worse before it gets better. An idea that just occurred to me... What if Taravangian lied to himself to manipulate his own future behavior in ways that wouldn't arise unless he didn't know about it? He remembers nothing from the day of lucidity, only what they were able to recover afterwards. That day he'd obviously known he'd never know what happened on that day, so it's entirely possible that Taravangian came up with a surefire solution to save 70% of the population of Roshar and merely told himself the chance of success was much lower to properly motivate his non-genius self or something. I don't think we can say that the deviations like Dalinar and Elhokar surviving assassination thanks to Kaladin were planned though. There would have been no way for him to know that in a few years some random kid would end up as a Surgebinder and the captain of Dalinar's guard. I think I have to agree with what was said above about the unpredictability of the KR. Not only are they an unknown factor in terms of their political stances, they're only just emerging so it's not an organization, it's individuals that suddenly manifest powers. Dalinar becoming a Bondsmith is probably about the single worst thing that could happen to the Diagram.

Against humans, probably. Headshots would be required for efficacy. That said, it would be far more effective against things like chasmfiends since their heads are rather large targets and their shells cease to be relevant.

I suspect that since he wished for capacity, each day he's given exactly as much intelligence/compassion as he needs to fulfill his duties to the Diagram on that day. If he were overly smart when he took over Jah Keved, he wouldn't have been the loving savior. If he were too stupid, Szeth would have chopped all their heads off and that would have been the end of the Diagram. As for it bringing about doom on its own, I doubt it. The Diagram seems to have way too firm a grasp on human behavior to be cold cruel logic alone. That said, I get the feeling that he was going with the highest rate of success plan. The Diagram might have a 90% chance of saving humanity on Roshar, but would require knocking its population down to, say, 4000 people. Letting the Knights Radiant save the day might only have a 30% chance of success, but if things go well, they could probably save way more of the population of Roshar. I feel like this is what he meant by saying that all else was dust. Other options could work and might have potentially better outcomes, but since the death of the human species (since I doubt he knows about the other Shardworlds) has a utility value of negative infinity, minimizing the chance of that trumps all else, even how terrible things will be if you actually survive the process. Is he liable to knock humanity back to the stone age? Yes. But I very strongly doubt that he'll actually pose an existential risk to the people of Roshar.

I doubt Adonalsium could have been shattered by any outside force. Each shardbearer can predict the future and presumably they can do so in an unlimited respect not accounting for the intervention of other shardbearers. Adonalsium, then, should have been able to predict the universe and its behavior into the distant future unless there was a corresponding anti-Adonalsium that opposed it, but I doubt it. The only solution I can come up with is that Adonalsium deliberately shattered itself with the point of destroying some component of itself that it found undesirable. If that's the case though, then we would have to accept that all splintered shards were aspects it wanted to leave behind, otherwise it would have tweaked the starting circumstance so Odium didn't break so much. Maybe it's just an artificial super intelligence and the whole series is just it updating its goal structure?

I think we'd have to say that the crustacean-like creatures of Roshar do have lungs. After all, we've seen chasmfiends make several deliberate vocalizations. It's possible they could do that with stormlight instead I suppose, but it seems utterly wasteful. Then again, from what we saw of larkins, it might be the case that all such creatures can suck the stormlight out of things. Perhaps the gemheart in that sense is the equivalent of a lung, though if that's the case I suspect that during the weeping the fauna of Roshar would have to get lethargic/briefly hibernate.

Having recently finished Words of Radiance, I found myself wondering during the final battle between Kaladin and Szeth, "can a living shardblade become a bow?" Yes, there are the heavy fabrial bows used in The Way of Kings, but I'm talking about a spren converting themselves into multiple parts. It's certainly possible to command a blade to stay away from you, but can you split the spren into multiple pieces (one for the bow, one for the arrow)? Further, since you can bond multiple dead shardblades to you, is it possible to have multiple living shardblades? If so, you could have one spren turn into a bow (or if elasticity isn't possible when spren take a physical form, at least an atlatl) while a second spren takes the form of the arrow/javelin. Same principle applies to the idea of a shard blow gun. Also, if it's possible to be bonded to dead shardblades while having a living one (albeit likely very unpleasantly), the living one could turn into an oversized atlatl for the dead one. Probably wouldn't work too well outside of Plate, but if you were wearing it, that would be a very long-ranged weapon.