Subvisual Haze

Wow, that was unexpected! What in the world is Nale trying to accomplish? My eyes are drawn to [Rushar Kris] the reclusive elderly ardent, who is also a master fabrian and now has created a design to help Gavilar trap/bind voidspren. I think we have our first sighting of Herald Ishar!

Nale also speaks of Ishar with great respect in later conversations. He seems to regard Kelek as an annoyance.

I suspect that Dalinar/Navani/Jasnah will probably stick together for politics. It is possible that Jasnah as Queen of an occupied country will forgo politics and join the main group with the intent of liberating Alethekar or join the front as a kickass Queen on Horseback type. Then it would be Dalinar/Navani and maybe one other character like Renarin to give us eyes on Urithiru intrigue. Venli makes sense as a continued POV from the other side of the conflict. Maybe she'll get paired up with Moshe as a pair of morally complicated turncoats full of regrets for their bad life choices. Shallan and Renarin would make a good independent research pair for looking into Sja-Anat due to Renarin's spren and Shallan's most recent task from the Ghostbloods. I'm guessing the remaining large group will be on one of the front lines. Herdaz seems the most likely, but the Horneater Peaks have also been heavily foreshadowed as a spot of importance.

But then you’ve designed a single school of magic without any limits. Soulcaster Radiants can make anything or everything? That sounds not Sanderson-like at all as he himself has stated that the limitations are what make magic system interesting.

Brandon's magic systems have firm rules, that makes them more fun than "wizard waves hand, literally anything is possible". A logical restriction on Soulcasting (based on its similarities to alchemy/chemistry) is that what you make needs to be an essence, sort of like an element in modern chemistry but with flexibility related to how humans conceive of the world around them. The key idea of here is that it needs to be homogeneous (adj. "composed of parts or elements that are all of the same kind"). The thing you make is of the same substance in a very small amount as in a very large amount. When you soulcast a block of stone, the whole is elementally identical to each of the small parts that make it up. Jasnah even mentions these building blocks of the universe (roughly their equivalent of atoms) Hey Brandon, what's an axi? Brandon Sanderson It is the word for an atom in the cosmere, coming from one of the original magics used on Yolen pre-shattering. To some, it's a theoretical smallest division of matter. But others use it scientifically to mean simply an atom. Skyward Pre-Release AMA (Oct. 22, 2018) The axi are the building blocks of their world, the smallest piece that soulcasting changes. It sounds like the soulcaster chooses a group of axi (which itself doesn't need to be elementally pure), then "instructs" each individual axi to turn into an essence (of which their is some flexibility). So basically what you make needs to be a big collection of small identical parts. Grain is no longer a plant with a complicated superstructure and differentiated parts, it's a processed material which you could reduce to a small replicable part (Starch+Cellulose for the most part). Similarly with wood. We've never seen someone soulcast a complete plant or other higher living thing though. Full plants are complicated things with differentiated unique parts, and if it were possible to make an approximate of such a thing if would likely involve multiple essences and multiple soulcastings. Same deal with a mushroom. Mushrooms have parts. Maybe you could choose a particular part of a mushroom like the stem and form a building block from it, but that wouldn't exactly be a mushroom anymore at that point, it's a building block of a mushroom mass replicated.

I seriously don't know what you want here. The post you're responding to is my effort to answer the exact question you're asking.

Soulcasting is just Alchemy under a different name. Just as alchemists had some unusual ideas about what the elemental building blocks of the universe are, so too does Alethi. Blood can be easily perceived by a pre-microscope culture to be one of the pure essences from which all of creation is built. So too a very homogeneous pile of processed grain (not the plants themself but processed and ready to consume grain) or artificial meat (bridge 4 evens notes that the texture of soulcast meat is slightly off from real meat, similar to science’s current struggles to make a non animal derived meat alternative). A unprocessed mushroom though would unlikely to viewed as a pure elemental form.

I'm not sure I really like the word from Brandon that Lightweavers have a sort of mental health improving aura and that's why Kaladin felt generally less depressed around Tien and Shallan. It steals some of the agency and humanity from their interactions.

This does seem to match with the way magic tends to shape around shared consensus of reality. Even using an emerald (generally used for grain), I think creating a mushroom out of soulcasting would be prohibitively complex and draining. Soulcasting seems to do its best work creating relatively homogenized materials en masse. Grain, generic "meat", a single type of metal etc. Maybe it could make a product formed from mushrooms like a cream of mushroom soup. Replicating life itself is likely far too complex.

Redemption arc with some sort of heroic sacrifice to redeem himself to the audience. Notably his Bridge 4 tattoo wasn't placed on his forehead but rather on his upper arm. It's hidden from view, but it's probably still there, just like Kaladin's slave tattoo remains. So much symbolism! Him killing Jezrien and taking his sword may have opened the possibility for Moash to inherit Jezrien's place in the Oathpact. Getting tortured on Braize to hold back the Fused for a while would go a long way to atone for his bad choices.

I think there's a decent chance that Hoid was the ghostwriter for The Way of Kings. The way it uses short story/parables to convey complex questions to the listener is pure Wit.

Even if that is Tarah we can't necessarily assume she's seeking out Kaladin for good reasons. She might be a spy in employ of Lady Sadeas.

I suspect it is mostly an observation that Kaladin places the desire to do the right thing above doing merely what the rules/oaths tell him is the right thing. Tanavast was the human holding the power of Honor. We know that the nature of the shards can warp the perspectives of their holders over time (Ati was a kind person, Ruin made him axecrazy). I suspect early on Tanavast was a more compassionate person who cared deeply for protecting humanity. As time progressed though and he was wounded in his struggle with Odium, I suspect he grew more extreme in his interpretation of Honor (black-and-white thinking, emphasizing the letter of oaths/laws instead of the human impact, not freeing the suffering Heralds from their oaths). As Odium himself accused: Now, everything Odium says should be viewed with a grain of salt, but he might be hinting at the end result of that sort of transformation process: Tanavast's personality being warped over time from viewing honor as a way of trying to do the right thing, and instead focusing on the process itself of Honor (keep oaths above all). The Stormfather himself implies at one point that Honor's personality had changed quite a bit by the end. You could view Szeth and Nale as good examples of that sort of extreme Honor rule following undiluted by compassion. Kaladin rather uniquely of the characters spends a lot of time mulling over what "doing the right thing" actually means. He wants to protect everyone, but how can you do that when two different groups of people you are sympathetic to start killing each other? Other characters are not necessarily evil in what they do, but they don't spend a lot of time digging deep about what really is right/wrong in specific situations. Dalinar follows the codes and the Words of Radiance without really constructing his own beliefs on right/wrong. I think that confusion and extreme focus on "what is right" by Kaladin is what makes him so uniquely Tanavast-like.

I wonder if Vo was something unique even among the Returned. Instead of coming back confused about who he was, he apparently delivered some important religious teachings and conceived a child, all within the short week he had to walk the world before dying again. Endowment must have been more involved than usual in his return.

God is dead. At least in the Judeo-Christian sense. The aspect most traditionally associated with God is (charitable/merciful) love. The shard of Adonalsium that seems closest to this is Devotion. Which was shattered long ago. Existential yikes!

Rial is definitely an odd one. I'm still hoping he's a kandra that took the body of the original MIA Rial.

I wondered if her interest in Fabrial sciences might indicate a family connection to Kharbranth/The Palaneum. That's a complete guess though.

I think it's that. They need to suppress their Divine Breath, which reverts their physical form to normal mortal human instead of Greek God. Most wouldn't want to do this because it would result in a loss of all their fancy powers that the one big Divine Breath gives. There are benefits though. Mostly to do with being stealthy, and I suspect being able to have children.

I don't think the Inquisitors want to fully wipe out Skaa mistings. After all, skaa mistings are their source of replacement spikes to propagate their species or upgrade themselves. As such I imagine they eliminate the dangerous ones or ones with particularly desirable powers to steal, but largely just keep tabs on the ones not flaunting their powers.

I think the cold-sensitivity of our Southern friends has something to do with the planet itself. Scadrial is actually quite unique in that Ruin+Preservation created the planet and humans and as such the very planet is suffused with their investiture. Rather than change the southern humans physically, I think instead their spirit(web?)(DNA?) was in some way modified to cause all southerners to be constantly be "storing" heat energy into the essentially infinite metalmind of the planet itself (maybe even linked to the spewing ashmounts in a giant investiture recycling system). This made the extremely hot un-shaded by ash conditions on the Southern Continent feel comfortable for them. When Sazed cooled the planet back to normal temperatures though, for some reason the constant low level heat-leaching has continued. As a result, Southerners need to tap a heat metalmind just to "get back to normal" by cancelling out their constant low level heat drain. Maybe Sazed didn't want to tinker around with the Southerner's spiritual aspect or didn't feel knowledgeable enough to change the system when he realized what was happening down under? Or maybe this heat piracy system is how Harmony balances his extra Ruin out, bumming heat from humans certainly feels Ruin-ish.

edit: Yes, thank you to everyone for repeatedly informing me that I am very wrong. Please consider me suitable chastised. They're from Adonalsium, and were likely part of the planet/system originally when Adonalsium created it. This was before Honor/Cultivation/Odium and human presence on the planet, all those came post Adonaslium shattering. Rhyshadium are native Rosharian creatures, and we can tell this because they're specially adapted to survive in Roshar's environment (spren bonding for any purpose is a Rosharian ecology trait as is hard carapaces to protect from the highstorms). This was also the clue starting us in the face all along that humans are the invasive species on Roshar, and Singers are the original residents: innate spren bonding and hard shells in the Singers. Normal earth horses are the invasive species brought to Roshar from another planet during one of the large human migrations. (This is what Renarin meant when he mumbled to Adolin that "they don't belong").

I assumed pushes and pulls just hacked the reality "code" specifically to negate Newton's 3rd law.

I think you always need to be careful when Roshar is mentioned because it could mean planet Roshar, or the solar system (including Braize and Ashyn). Maybe the Sleepless originally came from Ashyn and migrated to planet Roshar after Ashyn was magically nuked? Perhaps the Siah Amaians were the original inhabitants of the island and the Sleepless joined them later.

Let's go even deeper into the crazy hole. What if the origin island(s) is Cultivation's secretly culivated army/civilization where she has been enacting her deepest plans far from both Vorinism and Odium's eyes.

Kaladin is a thoughtful introvert with trust issues and survivor's guilt. Currently he throws his everything into his career to distract himself from his lack of social life, and he puts up walls to limit the abilities of others to get to know the real him. Bridge 4 is a great example of the "walls" he puts up. Kal is caring and protective of his people and willing to listen to their inner problems, but he never "lets his hair down" and just chills with anyone as a friend rather than a commander (they basically had to strongarm him to get drinks with them once). He is also very protective of his own personal details and inner thoughts and concerns. His "work life balance" is currently 100% work. These are defensive mechanisms (that he may not consciously realize he is doing) to distance himself and lessen the trauma of losing further people he is close to. He protects his inner self because his trust has been severely betrayed before. Adolin being a friendly extrovert has the best chance of cracking his shell. He's willing to push Kaladin to try new things, and not offended when Kaladin is occasionally snippy. Ultimately though, Syl is a big limiting factor on Kaladin getting out there and socializing. Syl is like a perfect imaginary friend: always supportive, intellectually engaging, entertaining, always willing to listen (literally always, she never sleeps!). She's almost too perfect to the point that she allows Kaladin to be complacent and never feel the need to interact with others.