Zedseayou

I'm not sure we know exactly how old Testament is. It's only with the honorspren where we are told every single honorspren had sought a bond pre-Recreance.

I knew this was the case, but only now am I realizing the ramifications. Felt must be pretty old, right? Invested or something to have a longer than normal lifespan. The Stormlight Archive is supposed to be taking place closer to Wax and Wayne than Era 1, so that makes him ~300? That's as old as, well, Kelsier obviously, but comparable to the likes of Nikli, the Sunmaker, and Vasher, among others. Another bundle of secrets tantalisingly out of POV...

The mechanics of the Everstorm are still pretty unclear to me. We've seen multiple descriptions of Fused being reborn in the storm, and there's that Odium quote that says he couldn't stop them returning now even if he wanted. But why does Lezian show up on Braize at the end of RoW? The Everstorm doesn't therefore allow the Fused to remain on Roshar after death, but just shortcuts them back to Roshar. Would the Everstorm have functioned if the Oathpact was intact? I think that it would have; why would Ulim have been doing all this plotting to summon the storm years before Taln returned to Roshar if his staying on Braize would have neutered those plots? This makes me sympathetic to the idea (@Realmatic Shadow) that Taln didn't actually break. Wit says he is late in the WoK epilogue, and he says he's late in his own WoR interlude. Perhaps this refers to his having disappeared somewhere between breaking and showing up at Kholinar, but I think this has to mean that for the first time he has returned after the voidspren, when previously the order would always be the other way around. Under this theory, I think that it is the presence of Voidspren in Shadesmar/on Roshar (due to Gavilar/Axindweth?), that is more likely to have tipped off the other Heralds. This is explicitly the case for Nale, that realization happens in Venli's POV. Kelek was perhaps involved earlier, trying to get offworld. We still don't exactly know what Gavilar planned, but I think that Nale was skeptical Gavilar was having any success returning Desolations and Kelek didn't care as much, so they were both happy to be in conference with him at/before the assassination. Kelek seems reluctant to have gone along with killing Gavilar, at least.

Hmmm, I could go either way on this. Pattern mentions a lot that he can leave if Shallan wants, and they'll send someone else to bond. If Testament was as aware of Shallan's thoughts as Pattern, I'd imagine Testament would leave voluntarily. But you're right that perhaps a unilateral bond breaking is not as permanent.

I think that I am coming around to the Testament-all-through-WoR point, @Jofwu. At the end of WoR Pattern specifically pushes Shallan to the second truth because "the people need a Radiant". That does feel like he knows they need to do it and get to level 3 so he can be a Blade. I think I lean more toward @yulerule here in that it's not just that Shallan is still alive, unlike the Recreance knights, but broke her bond in a different way. There is nothing like the vision of the Recreance with the blades falling from the air, and folks have mentioned the highly unlikely idea that Shallan added a gem and her use of powers pre-Pattern. So whatever the knights did seems to have been more final than what Shallan did. What could be different about her oathbreaking? The scene is described as: So perhaps Intent is involved? That seems awfully fuzzy. There also seems like there must have been some kind of transfer of "power" as well, as with Adolin and Maya. I'll add here that Pattern has been playing along with this for a long time. It's fascinating to go back and read WoR and OB scenes and notice that he probably doesn't actually know much of what happened with Shallan and her mother until she tells him. He kinda goes "Mmmm" a lot in key places and Shallan just fills in the gaps. Then he starts to just agree with her when she says that she hates him because she used him to kill her mother. And of course, the entire Wit-consulting business. Most likely he actually knows very little of what happened in Jah Keved at all...

They probably are referring to "I'm terrified" (soulcast goblet into blood) and "I killed my father" (going into Shadesmar in front of Jasnah), at the end of WoK. There's some relevant theorising in this thread:

I did just notice again a line in chapter 111: The Stormfather presumably has some of Tanavast's memories, so I assumed that this meant our lovely Wit

Oh, of course. He even says so pages later. That seems significant re: his connection to Honor, but not this thread. Whoops

I spotted one more possibly strange Kaladin thing. When he swears the fourth Ideal, the text is this: Isn't that strange? No explicit acceptance is given when he says the second Ideal, but at the third Ideal the Stormfather clearly is the one to say THESE WORDS ARE ACCEPTED. Now, it's clearly "a familiar voice, not he Stormfather's"? I'd assume some unknown fragment of Tanavast, or Tien, but could be a lot of options...

Thank you for writing this up! I've been wanting to go back through Shallan's chapters and try to put the timeline together. I agree with @Jofwu that "I'm terrified" belongs to Testament. See the section from WoK Chapter 45 where she says it: The way I read this now is that she has not tried to summon Testament since childhood, but when she tries again Testament demands another truth. But instead of the blade summoning, she gets dumped into Shadesmar. Testament's voice gets described as a "cold whisper". It feels very different from the "I killed my father" Truth, where it reads very much as Pattern's first truth (the Cryptic explains how the whole business works, rather than Testament's terseness above). I think I'll contribute by including the WoR Shardblade summonings here: Shallan kills Tyn with a "brilliantly silver Blade" in chapter 34, because the Ghostbloods revealed to Tyn that Shallan was Jasnah's ward and should have died. A bit earlier, she notes to herself that it doesn't have to be ten heartbeats for her to summon the blade. There isn't much description otherwise. Next she summons the Blade in the chasms with Kaladin in chapter 72, when they are stuck in a crack hiding from the chasmfiend. Now, the Blade glows, and is "the color of garnet", which is a deep violet. Kaladin notes that he doesn't hear the screech of a dead Blade. The Blade also can change shape when Shallan wants. Along with the fact that she can't send the illusions on Pattern (because Brandon didn't want to reveal that Blades are spren until Kaladin swears the third ideal in chapter 84), I agree with @Isilel that this is Pattern, not Testament. N.B. the description is from Kaladin, which should be reliable. Quoted above already, but this is from when she works the Oathgate in chapter . There is basically no description of the blade here, but it basically has to be Pattern because it works the Oathgate, and she says his name. It seems like a bigger stretch to say that Testament is special to the extent of being able to work the Oathgate than to just say that it's Pattern at this point. Note that she does say that she's killed with Pattern, which under this accounting is not actually true (Tyn and her mother were both Testament), so she's still not 100% unreliable. Why is Shallan unreliable, and switch from Testament to Pattern? I think the only thing that changes greatly between Tyn and the chasms is Shallan developing/revealing Veil as a persona. In RoW, Shallan says that Veil protects her from her past. This coincides with her increasing suppression of Testament and conflation of what she did as a child with what is happening to her now, with Pattern. So as Veil develops, she is able to switch to using Pattern as a Blade, because she has convinced herself it's not Testament. My main caveat with this reading is that it means she summoned Pattern at only one truth/level 2. I think this is acceptable, because it also makes the childhood story a bit easier to manage, since only one truth would be needed for Shallan to kill her mother with Testament. The main reason we think that we need to be level 3 for the blade is because of the Windrunners, and we know there are differences between orders since the Skybreakers don't even get a spren until the third ideal. TLDR: I think Tyn was killed with Testament, but the chasmfiend and the Oathgate are Pattern. This is because Shallan develops Veil in the meantime. P.S. I am not sure that "blades are wrong" is a truth, and in fact it's not clear from the end of RoW that "I killed my spren" is a truth either. That puts her still at Level 3

Honestly, when I read this at first I thought it was really dumb writing. I definitely didn't think it made sense that Kaladin could hold his own against Heavenly Ones without Gravitation, even confined in the tower, given how hard the battles in Part One were. If something else is going on that would alleviate this worry somewhat.

I assumed that this would have been the case with any Windrunner because of Cryptic/honorspren politics - there were no others at the time that Elhokar could have interacted with I realise I suggested that Syl was special in the OP but I'm realising now that it's odd for her to be surprised by the things that Kaladin is doing, since even if her previous Radiant hadn't done them presumably some of the other pre-Recreance honorspren Radiants could have. It seems as though whatever is happening now is at least partly new. This isn't how the Rhythm of War is described by Navani and Raboniel, right? It's two rhythms that aren't discordant if played correctly together. The eyes do suggest that some Odium-effect is part of the answer, though. I totally forgot about this and don't know what to think of it. It certainly seems like it should be a bigger deal if the Radiants can kill voidspren. I'm not sure if having some kind of link to Odium would necessarily be able to achieve this, either. The problem I currently have with these minor threads pointing at a connection to Odium is that Rayse says that it's only via Moash that Rayse can send visions. Plus, Odium thinks he's lost Kaladin as his champion. Of course, he could be lying/mistaken, but I still don't know where/how such a connection could have happened.

It's the one marked PG844 on Brandon's website as linked by @uncas above. This was one tidbit that definitely confused me because people were mentioning it in the reaction threads but nothing comes up if you search it on Kindle I definitely should go back and reread the art pages more carefully...

It seems like Odium thinks he's going to win, so why would he delay? The orbital movement thing also seems tricky - it's odd that Shards don't do it more often, in my mind. Why is the battle for the cosmere being fought on a human scale at all? There are definitely some other constraints at play

I too thought that Navani's arc no longer has far to go, but commenters reminded me that she is a Bondsmith now! There is bound to be a lot of interesting exploration with her and Dalinar on the nature of Connection. Unfortunately I expect very little of that to happen before the 10 day deadline... so the pacing of the next book is going to be very odd.

I don't think I wrote this anywhere, but I did theorise that Shallan's secret was a previous spren. In particular, the confusing situation about exactly how many truths she'd spoken and when she'd spoken them seemed to imply that there were too many truths, given that she somehow had a shardblade extremely early. I wish I'd replied to one of the threads about whether she has Shardplate etc. at the time. I think it's clearer that she is actually only at the third ideal (unclear if the revelations at the end of RoW were another one), and I have no idea where her arc is going now. A lot of people suspected Adolin would partially revive Maya, I barely even know if that's a prediction. I was totally wrong about the Sibling, I didn't think they were Navani's correspondent (thought it was Sleepless) and I didn't want her to be the Bondsmith (at least in part because I have no idea how she's going to make that work now). I was definitely mad about the Rlain tease for bondsmith, someone even says that he's spoken for and in the entire final climax I was trying to figure out how he was going to make it down to the pillar room in time to bond the Sibling... heavy misinterpretation on my part. I had no idea about Restares or Thaidakar. Do you have a link to this? I'm curious because I'd seen a Nale was watching Szeth theory on Reddit but definitely thought it had to be a voidspren who took Klade to him. What I find particularly hilarious about how it turned out is that it seems like Nale told Ulim to get Gavilar killed to stop the Fused returning, but Ulim did it in order to bring the Fused back, but the Five did it in order to stop the Fused returning... plus, the Five might not have done it if Gavilar hadn't grabbed Eshonai and shown her the voidlight, which doesn't happen until well after Nale meets Ulim or Gavilar! A truly ridiculous sequence of events that only looks to get crazier with the Book 5 prologue and us hopefully finding out about Axindweth and the other Terris, not to mention Liss and other loose threads...

The section where the chicken appears to know the direction the body is in, despite this being through the wall/floor, suggests something more like a compass than a memory for routes. Not necessarily supernatural, but certainly hard and seemingly more specific than birds can normally do.

Can you imagine if Kaladin and Lirin's disagreements stem from him not being his actual son in a divine conception plotline? It'd be so awful...

I think if we follow this theory exactly, it would imply that spren created since the Recreance would not be as suffused with Odium's investiture. This has implications for whether or not the new crop of honorspren (and possibly other, younger spren) are subject to becoming deadeyes from broken oaths.

I don't think it was ever explicitly explained why Kaladin remained awake through the suppression. Only he, Lift and Venli do of the Radiants in the tower. Lift and Venli have Lifelight/Voidlight weirdness to explain things, but what's up with Kaladin. Ideas: Radiants are particularly attuned to one or other of their Surges, and Kaladin is to Adhesion (which isn't suppressed) Problem: Kaladin hasn't exactly been a prodigy with Adhesion, at least not obviously more so than Gravitation, or compared to other Radiants. Kaladin is especially close to the Fourth Oath, while none of the others are, and this lets him break the suppression I don't love this because there are others with Shardblades (third oath) at the tower I think, and this seems like a very fuzzy boundary. Conscious/not unconscious should be a fairly big separator Kaladin has some special Honor connection stuff going on that we can only speculate about (perhaps via Syl, as one of the original honorspren) Nothing seems particularly satisfying to me so far. Thoughts?

I lean coincidence personally. I think the only description of Kristir is short and rosy-cheeked, which isn't a strong giveaway for Khriss. (mistborn spoilers) Of course Khriss could have learned some disguises...

I like this idea a lot, though we have not seen any sign of impending death for Cultivation in the way that Preservation intentionally knew would come to pass for him. Honestly, we do need to try and figure out what Cultivation's long term gameplan is, because it seems like it's not limited to just Roshar at all, and it is a lot bigger and more subtle than we might have previously thought. It would definitely be great to understand the details of Lift's boon more...

Renarin does make an appearance. He doesn't have a ton of scenes but we do learn some interesting things about him, and also indirectly through others discussing him. He's with the coalition armies which don't get mentioned much till Part 3, so you don't see him till later.

Perhaps this is how Lift creates Lifelight? Navani didn't show the ability to convert one Light into another, though.

I almost felt like it was a deliberate pile on... like it was almost gratuitous. Elhokar was one thing, he was only slightly coming round by the end, but Teft? After he stayed to help Kaladin at the tower? And when Teft was close to the 4th Ideal too? And to kill Phendorana as well as him? Egregious. Absolutely vile.