Subvisual Haze

I would guess he had a future vision telling him he needed to be there at that moment and shine his magic flashlight at Moash.

Ooh, great catch, I love this theory. There would have been a time shortly before the Recreance (when the gemstone archive was being written) where the functions of Urithiru were slowly failing but Radiants weren't aware of the extent. It's a perfect window for tempers to run hot and the Skybreakers and Windrunners to nearly come to blows. Being a psychic shield against Unmade influence likely played a huge factor in why the Radiants Orders met in Urithiru, same with the monarchs from around the Silver Kingdoms. (Minus a functional Urithiru, Roshar desperately needs those aluminum lined hats that are coming into fashion on Scadrial to protect their emotions from bad influence!)

Sja-Anat defects and either becomes the new Bondsmith Godspren (in place of the dead Sibling), OR works her weird enlightening touch to bring back the Sibling as something...changed (weird, but not necessarily in a bad way). She also displays the ability to do this to other dead spren. Hunting and capturing the other Unmade becomes a top priority. Dai-Gonarthis with his "take away my sorrow", becomes a central player in both Moash and Kaladin's emotions. Moash/Dai-Gonarthis' "everyone dies eventually" argument ironically helps Kaladin swear his 4th oath. Moash kills Gaz in a dramatic fashion while Kaladin watches. Dalinar mostly serves as an exposition device and doesn't see much action (sorry Dalinar, you finished up your character arc too early!) Rlain finds the lost remnants of the Listeners, meets Venli, becomes a Willshaper.

Presumably the Highspren made her sign an NDA before discussing anything with her during her trip through Shadesmar.

Shallan killed Shallan and has been an unknowing ghost the entire time.

Moash killing Gaz would make a lot of thematic sense. Moash is Kaladin's shadow, literally carrying out Kaladin's repressed desires for vengeance.

If Dalinar and Szeth can seek redemption from their mountain of corpses so can Moash. His character shift from the last book is so dramatic that I'm pretty sure his mind is under heavy influence from an Unmade (some have hypothesized Dai-gonarthis, which seems like a good guess). Hopefully Renarin was able to shock him into starting some self-reflection. I think he has to be redeemed/forgiven, even if its something as simple as a last-second change of heart followed by a heroic sacrifice. If he doesn't, Kaladin is going to be permanently broken.

Yeah, malatium is also a hybrid of Atium and gold powers. Rather like how Renarin is using a hybrid of Truthwatcher surges and Sja-Anat magic. It seems like the Sja-Anat powers have a pretty strong link to the spiritual realm (seeing the future, seeing alternate paths other's lives could have taken).

I feel very ambivalent towards him. I generally like themes of redemption, but usually there's some sort of struggle or penance the hero goes through to atone for their mistakes. Gaz was pretty awful person and then just sort of fell face first into a rewarding position.

Yeah I definitely think it makes sense that there's Unmade involvement here. Moash's words were awful, but the degree and speed to which they affected Kaladin and "blocked" Syl from speaking to him makes me think an Unmade was messing with his head and exacerbating his emotions. You could read an interesting Spiritual balance occurring in this scene. Moash and the unmade manipulate Kaladin to confront the darkest version of himself. Renarin in turn makes Moash see the alternate better version of himself. Light and dark.

Moash you're really not giving this Odium "surrender your pain" sales pitch very well. Your target audience is a guy with soul crushing depression and life full of tragedies. An evil god who can numb away your bad emotions and make you never feel mental anguish or depressed again would be a much more tempting offer than "lol nothing matters, just kill yourself"

I am so confused how Gaz was able to grow back an eye. I thought Lopen was the weird exception to the rule that longterm injuries/disabilities don't tend to heal, and he only did it through shere unwillingness to accept his arm was lost. Gaz's lost eye and the paranoia and fear it caused him was a pretty central part of his character in the brief POV we had of him.

Drank the suicide wine, delivered a "someone is going to kill me, there's a traitor amongst you!" idea to Shallan just to mess with her. Ialai was a ruthless spymaster for Sadeas, why not go out in an incredibly dramatic way that sows discord amongst your enemies?

Taln was the star of this book, I loved both his character and the teasing hints of lore and past events he was constantly dropping. Everyone else in the story came off as needlessly dense for not being willing to entertain the possibility that he was a herald. Incredible warrior, had a shardblade, was a male fully literate in reading and writing, knew about a secret door (buried under a layer of dust!) in the capital, navigated the dark caverns nobody knew about, located a legendary stash of 9 uniquely shaped honorblades in a lost temple buried under an enormous accumulation of crem, makes references to ancient events that wouldn't be impossible to cross-reference for accuracy (as they have books written in previous Epochs in this timeline). Jasnah was an interesting character to read, and I enjoyed her budding romance with Taln and mutual conflicts between duty and personal desires of happiness. She came across as kind of a dumb-dumb though. She's constantly getting outsmarted by people around her, and her supposed tactical brilliance is repeatedly told to us by other characters but never really shown. She also doesn't come across as especially heroic or caring of others. Her not-dead bodyguard tells us through Taln that "she cares" about others, but this scene in particular takes place almost immediately after her other close bodyguard is executed by Meridas on Gavilar's orders! Why exactly she doesn't completely despise Meridas after this point and continues to play diplomatic games with him reflects poorly on how much she really cares about the people of Alethi. She seems to mostly just care about Alethi as an abstract concept. Love all the changes that have been made to Jasnah in our canon timeline to correct a lot of these probably unintentional flaws! All our other POVs were varying degrees of bland and showed impressive skill on Brandon's part in how he modified them to their currently existing forms. Merin was an empty shell of a protagonist, and Kaladin has little relation to him outside of killing a shardbearer (Taln is really the character that Kaladin resembles the most from this story personality wise). Shinri managed to outbland even Merin, and mostly just gets captured a lot (with implication that her Elsecaller powers were going to be the key to bringing Taln back in future books). Dalenar was pretty dull, and it's clear that giving Dalinar a much darker past helped a lot in giving him a better arc of growth. Szeth now expressing more actual grief and sadness towards his victims makes him more complex and worthy of a little sympathy. Ahven was an utterly loathsome antagonist who commits cruelties to eliminate his own weakness of compassion, Taravangian's variable daily levels of compassion and avoiding crossing certain moral horizons (Taravangian compromises his word saving mission to save his family/city, Ahven kills his family to eliminate a source of weakness) make him more complex. Ultimately both characters are good object lessons of the remarkable evils that can be justified from a purely end justify the means morality. The lore in this book was extremely detailed, and I kind of loved that. I understand why Brandon keeps past events on dripfeed in a 10 book series, but it was a lot of fun reading this book just referencing important details about heralds and world lore everywhere. Taln even references specific epochs/desolations when recounting past events, letting you construct a pretty decent timeline. The nature of Heralds and their powers are given in a lot of details (including a hint of a great shameful secret in their past), a lot of passing references are made about what Heralds are skilled at certain tasks, the Heralds and humanity originating from another planet is pretty blatantly stated. Some random lore stuff that jumped out at me My complete guess for our undercover Hoid is Devon Lhale, the extremely chatty exposition dumping merchant with no other greater role in the story beyond telling Jek that Dalenar was coming to attack Elhokar and giving background on how the rest of the world viewed the Shin. The Heralds seem to have been 9 males and 1 female, glad we got more gender balance (although to be fair all non-Ash Heralds have had minimal presence in the story thus far). "Tell me, where are the others? Your brethren and sister?”" There's strong implications that the Heralds did something morally dubious in their past. Taln references the Heralds "not being what mankind presumed them to be" and references "burdens taken in the name of the greater good". Taln alone "doubted their course" regarding the "Capture of the Magnatah" which resulted in the formation of the Nahel bond. "The sign" that Heralds can manifest is a web of a thousand beautiful golden threads radiating out of from themselves, "each one a life". When Taln is yelling at the Almighty he says "We know the error of our decision. Must you prove it further?" I'm going to guess the Heralds' "Capture of the Magnatah" involved their binding/enslaving the elemental essences of the world. This is the source of their powers, directly linking them to the associated essence and force via the nahel bond. I think the powers themselves have a certain degree of sentience and will though (a bit like the spren), hence the capture of them being kept a secret. I also think that the mysterious gem-studded door under the capital leads to the location where the elemental spirits are bound. "The passage we went through wasn’t really meant to be an escape from the palace—it was built to . . . hide things."-Taln I'm basing this elements having sentience/will on how the Ahven's onyxseers are talking. They don't sound like children, their perspective and concerns might match well to a worldwide elemental force. "I see . . . chaos in the patterns. Our protectors have fallen. Someone must make ten kingdoms into one.” Balenmar/Ishar is the hidden mover of current events. It's on his word alone that the Alethi believe the Traitor was responsible for killing their King. His testimony also leads Elhokar to believe that other lord is openly conspiring treason and thus kicking off the civil war. He also gives Ahven a detailed map of the underground caverns (which Taln believes only he personally has ever explored), and implores Ahven to kill Jasnah and everyone with her (indicating that his true goal is to kill Taln). Presumably he also put the magic lock on the secret door leading to the caverns. As the founder of Vorinism, he was likely responsible both for the change in doctrine that the Heralds weren't coming back, as well as the founding of the splinter Elinrah faction under his clandestine control. In this timeline though the other Heralds regard Ishar as a traitor and assumed he was already dead, which is an interesting variation of his current version. The Oathpact seems to be a function of the 10 Kings/Oathgates, not necessarily the Heralds themselves. The power of the Knights Epellion are "tied to the royal families" per Taln. The Epoch Kingdoms going to war seemed to coincide with Epellion powers leaving the world during "The Silence", with the important exception of the Shin! The Shin still have onyxseers as practiced by their leaders the Holetatinal / The Stone Shamans - the very same future seers that declared Jek truthless and sent the Shin clans out to conquer the world on the false belief that a desolation had begun. I'm guessing the reason the Shin alone have retained Epellion powers, is because their Kingdom stayed true to the Oathpact. Other rulers also have onyxseers, but they all seem to be under 17 years old, while the Shin's are implied to be elders of society. 17 years ago seems to be the moment that some Khothen stealthily returned to the world, and in response Epellion powers started to be reborn into the world. Ahven tells Jek that the Stone Shaman leaders of the Shin (onyxseers themselves) joined Jarnah to conquer/unite the world because they believed the Stormshades were back. They gave up after failing to find any Khothen, but I think the Khothen were just being sneaky. “Was it?” Ahven prompted. “You sided with Jarnah, the Conqueror. You invaded the Kanaran Peninsulas, slaying thousands, capturing Thalenah, Vedenar, and Prallah. And you did it all upon the word of your shamans, who claimed the Return had come again, that the Stormshades had returned to Roshar.” “What happened at the end, assassin?” Ahven asked. “Did you find any demons to slay, or did you just find innocent soldiers? What of the claimed Return? Seventeen years have passed without sign of any monsters come to destroy humankind. Your shamans were wrong, but you listened to them anyway. You killed upon their word. Conquered, just as I do. What did your shamans see? Were their visions wrong? Or, perhaps, did they have a simpler motive? A desire to capture the lands to the east . . . an excuse.”

Has Brandon been watching HBO's Spartacus? "By Jupiter's c***!" Hoping we get a "Chana's chest!" at some point.

I'd say it's a pretty accurate portrayal of two politicians stuck in a loveless marriage. Especially so in monarchies marriages were primarily a political agreement to reinforce alliances and produce heirs, they smile together in public, and in private tend to regard each other with minimal affection and often outright contempt.

Well the Ghostbloods themselves told Shallan that Ishnah was someone of minimal importance and relatively trustworthy, thus she clearly couldn't be a Ghostblood

The normal looking tree implies we are in Shinovar, which means we are looking westward at the sunset.

The Sadeas family and their repeated consequence-free treasonous mayhem makes a strong moral case for the necessity of assassins in societies where the nobility is above the reach of the law. I wonder if this will become a bit of a running theme, Dalinar is just so nice and honorable that he's unwilling to do the needful to the Sadeas/Amaram/Taravangians of the world and someone else needs to do the dirty work to keep the system functioning.

! I also was getting huge Kubrick monolith vibes

An effect of the lighting in Shadesmar? Without full spectrum light certain colors could appear more muted. Shallan is the exception here, but she's being directly illuminated by whatever she is soulcasting behind her.

In the physical realm sure. Nightblood might behave quite differently in Shadesmar though. Either way, Nightblood isn't a danger until it is drawn. Adolin might just be carrying Nightblood around and planning to have Shallan actually draw the sword when they reach their objective. My baseless speculation is they're going on a mission to fight an Unmade which is harassing spren in Shadesmar (causing the current Honorspren shortage). Or perhaps fighting whatever is corrupting Cultivation's Perpendicularity.

I do think that's Nightblood that Adolin is wielding. It would be a humorous contrast to Nightblood's physical realm manifestation of consuming investiture (creepy black smoke) if instead its crazy level of investiture manifests as pretty rainbows in the cognitive realm. It would be more a reflection of how Nightblood sees itself.

non-Radiant soulcasters slowly incur changes to their soul and physical body, becoming more and more physically like their preferred essence until their body finally converts itself to pure essence. The nahel bond of Radiant soulcasters though seems to offer "protection" to their soul and body against this transformation. If the nahel bond was changed in some way following Honor's death, perhaps novice Radiant soulcasters are more at risk of accidentally changing or killing themselves when soulcasting?

Oof, I hadn't really considered how the Heralds who didn't die during the Desolations returned to Damnation. Killing themselves is a simple enough explanation.