Krandacth

The main issue is that he would definitely know what Gly looked like if he were a Truthwatcher spren: Ym uses the Surge of Regrowth and his Spren urges him, as far as I understood it, to Lightweave (something about "using light", and Ym says he "doesn't know how," immediately after using Stormlight for Regrowth; so the 'light' referred to by his spren must be a different kind of light; so Lightweaving). That leaves either: wishing to keep people guessing about Ym's order until Edsgedancer (tenuous, the above understanding of Ym's interlude); or Glys being unexpectedly different from Ym's spren in some way.

One of the quirks I would have thought you would have come across already, @jebaited, is from the in-world book The Way of Kings, which is interpretted by the Alethi elite as claiming that Lighteyes should serve Darkeyes. As such, most current Lighteyes shun the book... But there are quirks in there. However, yes, on Roshar light eyes are closely coupled with a form of magical power.

So Lagos is a cereal grain. That means it could be anything from corn to buckwheat to rice. The fact that it is sometimes distilled into ales and (more importantly) hard liquor called Honu suggests rice (and Saki) to me. Also, the thick Lavis stews/broths that are described in book sound like lentil broths or risottos to me. So I would take the homogenous, bland "miracle meat" suggestion for flangria above and mix with rice flour into meat balls. In terms of the gravy, the only thick dark sauce of vaguely Spanish origin that I can think of at the moment is a Mexican mole sauce, whose standout flavours are bitter chocolate and chilli... Could definitely be worth a try!

There's no confirmed mention of him having one of his turns after stopping wearing glasses (outside of when holding his Shardblade, and we all know what Bonded people hear when holding one of those... Probably enough to make anyone freeze up, as if having an absent seizure). So his epilepsy probably is cured.

Taravangian is seen as a bit slow, and politically dense (or at least apathetic). He wears regal robes of white and orange. He is often accompanied by a tall, stern, imposing figure, particularly when in public, who might often be seen to subtly whisper guidance to his king, or even overtly obstruct the king if he is going off message, making some excuse for the kings sudden withdrawl. In his first scene he is cast with a (grand)fatherly air, next to a princess that is taller than him and has long black braided hair. My question: Is Taravangian short and portly? Because I'm scared that I'm not recognising him by obvious descriptive cues, as in my minds eye he looks like this:

I like that plot, @Andy92, but I would throw in one or two Szeth interludes to show what's happening to him, at points where time jumps forward in the main plot. Probably the interlude where he gets sent by the small-time drug lord and picked up by Taravangian's man, then the one where he attacks the Veden king. That then leaves the Scene with him and Taravangian as a post-credits moment, that can have the opposite impact as in the books when Shallan meets him in WoK part two: Shallan (which blurs into WoR, ending with her killing Tyn and entering the Shattered Plains. And maybe having included other interludes that didn't make it into WoK part one?).

I was thinking the same thing. This may require spiking the Spren, though... Any word on whether you can use an already-invested spike to steal a connection?

I like the idea that the Unmade are the corrupted Dawnshards (though that doesn't fit with the snippet of story from Jasnahs research regarding someone "taking a Dawnshard, known to bind both voidish and mortal" [paraphrased] as if it we're an inanimate thing), but I personally subscribe to the general theory that anything with "Dawn" in its name predates the Shards moving to Roshar... So they couldn't be of Honor, for me, but they could be super-spren of Adonalsium that Odium corrupted. Btw @The Flash, there aren't 10 unmade (according to a well circulated WoB I can't find on my mobile).

They get released at the same time, and there is a note in the back of the first saying "If it feels like this book ended abruptly, it is because this is not the whole book, but rather one book split into two for printing purposes. It is not intended to read as a whole story in itself." This was the only option for WoK paperback, but I believe WoR paperback was available whole. It was later made available in two halves for those who prefer a less hefty reading experience, or those OCD enough to want every book in a series in the same form (like myself).

How did the amorous nocturnal chicken start it's letter to Hoid? "To Wit, to woo..."

How so? Also, see above. Well, I'll get to work again when we get their creation myth

Actually, I didn't mean to imply they did become trees/fish, more that in bonding tree-spren or ocean-spren they would become wood-like or fish-like creatures; I was personally imagining beings akin to Ents or Mermen, respectively.

So, no counter arguments? That's unusual here! While this is true, my theory is that Cultivation more made them human-like than mountain-like, not actually being a Spren of the mountains and more a Spren-like being they discovered in the mountains. Also, most non-Odium Listener forms we've seen are quite stocky and broad. As such, what you point out could be explained by Cultivation just leaving them their not-specifically-Listener physical characteristics when making them human-like.

I'd like to quickly pick up this point: There's a WoB (on my mobile, so can't easily find it, but it is thrown round this forum a lot) that many other kinds of Spren would also say that they are Honorspren. Syl basically means, therefore, that she is of the Shard Honor, but that doesn't mean she is literally a Spren of honorability (though she is a Spren of an honorable ideal). Windrunners necessarily don't emulate every aspect of Honor, therefore, just their particular ideal. I've always assumed that Bondsmiths are closest to directly emulating Honor's Intent with their ideals, because they are the most central on Honor's side of the Surgebinding chart. Anyway, continue.

The Horneater origin story, as told by Rock and paraphrased by me, goes something like this: "Always persecuted by the [rest of the] humans, the Horneaters' ancestors asked various spren for help. These spren offered to grant them their homes as their own, but warned that the [rest of the] humans also persecuted their kind (Kaladin scoffs at the idea of Horneaters being chopped down by woodsmen). The 'spren' of the mountain refuses to help them until they have proven they can cultivate a home for themselves on their barren slopes. When they do so, [she] it grants them the home (which they had already made for themselves) that allowed them to live in relative peace alongside the [rest of the] humans." I believe this is the story of a group of listeners that succeed in breaking from the cycle of desolations by convincing Cultivation to give them a human-like and -compatible form, thereby allowing interbreeding. I'll break this down into notions: 1) The persecution by [other] humans definitely aligns with the desolations. 2) All their pleas to the Spren are answered in terms of transformation: The suggestion that, by living in the forest, they would be targeted by woodsmen, or by living in the sea they would be targeted by fisherman, indicates that in those cases they would become wood or fish. Sounds like Listener forms to me. 3) When they went to the mountains they were not offered such an obvious transformation, and were basically asked to Cultivate the peaks into somewhere habitable in exchange for being sheltered from the persecution mentioned in part 1). On the face of it this seems like the weakest offer, seeming to be 'if you make a home for yourself, thereby making this place easily habitable by humans (and therefore accessible to the ones persecuting you), I'll let you live there'. However, we know there is a Shardpool in the middle of the Horneater peaks, and the suggestion has been that it is Cultivation's, what with all the surprisingly habitable ecosystem. Perhaps, in fleeing to the peaks and Cultivating it into a home, a group of Listeners convinced Cultivation to grant them a human-like (and -compatible) form. It was this that made them safe from the humans, with whom they could now breed to dilute their hereditary vulnerability to Odium whilst maintaining their culture (hence the singing, and treating spren as gods). What do you guys think?

Although it does line up with their origin story, as told by Rock and paraphrased by me: "always persecuted by the [rest of the] humans, asked the spren for help and granted a home (and form, perhaps?) that allowed them to live in relative peace alongside the [rest of the] humans." The first bit definitely aligns with the desolations. Actually, I just noticed how all their pleas to the Spren are answered in terms of transformation: The suggestion that, by living in the forest, they would be targeted by woodsmen (which Kaladin scoffs at), or by living in the sea they would be targeted by fisherman, indicates that in those cases they would become wood or fish. Perhaps when they went to the peaks and cultivated it into a home they were granted a human-like (and -compatible) form by the owner of a particular Shardpool located there... Edit: Sorry for the thread hijack, I'll take my musings to a new thread for comment.

Oh, of course. My high school physics deserted me for a while there :S being on a train and just glancing over the equation's doesn't help either!

Also, using the OPs figures and data regarding luminosity/habitable zones and planet density, we end up with a year of approximately 1.1 au, which is the stated length of a Rosharan year. I would say it all adds up nicely :-)

Have there been any theories connecting that orb taken from the Radiant's necklace, with the apparent intent to capture a void-tainted spren, to that entrusted to Szeth by Gavilar that glows with dark stormlight?

Interestingly, this fits eerily well with the situation presented in the available chapters of The Liar of Partinel, If that does turn out to be an early prototype for Dragonsteel, then I actually really like this theory, Pagerunner.

On yet another reread I looked at Amaram's precise words regarding his identifying his assassin as a Ghostblood, and it seems it was definitely more assumption than recognition: "... why Thaidakar would risk this? But who else would it be? The Ghostbloods grow more bold..." (Emphasis added). So even if this was Heleran, there is at least no strong reason to assume he was a Ghostblood and not a Skybreaker. Hope this helps :-P

That's a good hypothesis with generally excellent reasoning. I would like to point out one small inconsistency, though it in no way contradicts your overall point: The Shattered Plains (at the other end of the continent) were shattered during Aharietiam, by common understanding, so if it was in Shinova it was also likely everywhere in between. As it was the last battle in a Desolation, where Odiumspren could pretty much turn up anywhere at any time, this is entirely feasible. However, I haven't seen any geographical reference to Aharietiam other than the Shattered Plains... How do you know it happened in Shinova at all? (Other than the abandoned Honorblades ending up there.)

There is at least one example in the text. Syl frequently takes the form of a bunch of leaves blown in the wind. I've posited elsewhere that spren can form multiple objects where those multiple objects form/represent a cohesive, single concept to which the spren is related. In the leaves' case, this represented concept is the breeze carrying the leaves, the leaves being what allows the wind to be observed. For example, she couldn't form a bunch of leaves on the ground or spread around, as they do not collectively represent a concept to which she is related. A Shardbow and Shardarrow could arguably be considered a single concept pre-firing (barely, and Brandon has said no in the referenced WoB), but post-firing are definitely separate. In the same way, the separate pieces of a broken blade are conceptually distinct, and so as soon as a Sprenblade broke I would expect it to change form (if alive) or dematerialise (if dead) so instantaneously that I would question if it can have counted as broken in the first place. As stated by @Spoolofwhool, I would expect any other Shardblade to just break, if with great difficulty. What that would do to a artificial sentient Blade (that is tied to a physical form but doesn't form it, and so doesn't control it), I have no idea, but I imagine it isn't pleasant...

I like many of your points here, and it does seem far from impossible that there might be more Vedens (Vedenar being a country not much smaller than Alethkar) with red hair (a common Veden trait, by all accounts) involved in the many secret societies on Roshar. However, the specific scenario you describe above seems highly unlikely: In all instances of Shardblade lending seen so far, the Blade remains bonded to the lendER, and may in fact be summoned back by them at any time. For Amaram to be able to bond the Veden's dropped Blade it would have to no longer be bonded, which would mean it had previously been bonded to the Veden. For that Veden to have been Talak with Liss' Blade, she would have had to completely unbond it and let Talak bond it. This seems like an insane move, regardless of how much she trusted Talak (which likely isn't much anyway, in her line of work). Even more damning, however, is that Shallan confirms that the Blade in question belonged (at some point after the WoR prologue) to Heleran :-P The only feasible scenario close to the specific one you proposed is that Heleran became unbonded from his Blade, it ended up with Liss, she gifted it to Talak, then sent him to kill Amaram. While feasible, this is pure speculation, and the general theory (that Heleran was separated from his Blade and it ended up with another Veden sent to kill Amaram) is exactly as stated in the OP.

Wyndle says in WoR that he has retained as much he has because of preparations carried out by The Ring (or whatever the governing body of his Spren-race is called). They chose Lift because of how and why she is unique, but apparently not because that would make it easier on Wyndle.