Subvisual Haze

We only saw him briefly in Edgedancer, but that's not at all how I saw Szeth's new character. He seemed very introspective and questioning of his place in the world, but not harboring any demonstrative murderous intent. He didn't even seem to have fully bought into the Skybreaker pitch yet, he openly questioned Nale at one point.

I don't think this is actually correct, but you deserve lots of upvotes for such a creative interpretation though. Mostly I think this is wrong just because it seems too cruel, and Nightwatcher seems more enigmatic than sadistic in her actions. Personally I think the soul-Connection between Dalinar and Evi was magically blocked by Nightwatcher. The marriage sworn oaths (oaths being central to magical power related to Honor) between Dalinar and Navani has forged a tight connection between them, and somehow Dalinar is using his Bondsmith powers to "work around" the block. Navani's soul remembers Evi, and Dalinar's soul is now so tightly connected to Navani that he can remember Evi through Navani. I think this might be a sneak peak of a Bondsmith's powers - the ability to create or block connections between different souls.

They can, but many will choose to join Odium and the power he offers now that they have the freedom to choose. They've known nothing but oppression from humans, and soon will likely be attacked by fearful humans. Kaladin is really the perfect person to help the Parshmen. In addition to his oaths to protect, he also completely understands the hatred oppressed Parshmen feel towards humans due to his own experiences and hatred toward light eyes.

It could be a sort of anti-magic defense mechanism. When Shallan is trying to draw the place it somehow interferes with her powers of perception? Perhaps the stone itself is a certain mixed composition to prevent Thunderclasts from forming out of the walls.

Please stop hurting that poor Greek loan word. It did nothing to deserve that kind of treatment, being lopped in half and having a Latin suffix grotesquely grafted on it. euaggelion -> Evangelion (Gospel or good news) euaggelizo -> Evangelize (bringing good news, to announce good news) euaggelistēs - > Evangelist (one who brings good news)

People are over reading a simple self-confidence trick of the mind that Shallan used to overcome her anxiety about a traumatic event. Back in college I had social anxiety specific to public speaking. I never truly got comfortable with public speaking due to my inherently perfectionist tendencies and over active imagination regarding things that could go wrong, but I did teach myself a silly psychological trick similar to what Shallan is doing here. I merely "pretended" that I was a slightly different person, modifying my behavior and thought patterns to act more like a close friend who was extremely self-confident. I never truly overcame my self-doubts, but I was able to temporarily "play a role" that allowed my mind to ignore the counterproductive anxious thoughts in my head. This worked reasonably well for me, and based on cursory google searches a lot of other individuals use similar methods to deal with challenging situations. Shallan's basically method acting a version of herself that is slightly more like Jasnah. Assuming different roles/masks in different social settings is perfectly normal human behavior. The way that you talk or act around your parents, your friends, at work, at church, around academic colleagues, when tutoring others, or when part of a very large crowd can all be extremely different. That doesn't mean that you're "fake", it's adapting yourself to different social dynamics, a normal and healthy thing to do.

I think "boosting" is the wrong line of thought for what Bondsmiths do. I think Bondsmiths can forge temporary Connections between the souls of things (almost like a temporary and non-violent form of Hemalurgy). In the scene with the map, I think Dalinar's bondsmith abilities formed a temporary Nahel bond between Shallan and Stormfather which resulted in the map. As for the dead shardblades, the trick is correcting what was lost. Spren existed symbiotically with their Radiants, the sundering of the oaths was the equivalent of a magical lobotomy, violently tearing away chunks of their soul/spirit-web. The spren can't go back to zero state and slowly re-bond with a new radiant soul because they're too wounded. I think to re-awaken the blade, a new wielder would need to be discovered who had similar holes in their spirit web as the previous bonded Radiant. It would have to be a person with very deep scars on their own soul. I really like the thought of synergy between a Truthwatcher seeing insight into a soul and a Bondsmith forging a temporary connection with a soul to jump-start a bonding process. Maybe something similar even existed before the Recreance? Humans are a pretty error prone group, one would assume that on an individual level Radiants occasionally broke their oaths per-Recreance and a mechanism existed to "recover" the spren afterwards. This might also explain why these two orders in particular have such a central location in the surgebinding diagram.

I like this. Truthwatcher visions would make sense as a spiritual realm based magic. Adolin having a flash of an idealized version of himself while being healed by Renarin seems to fit with how the spiritual realm has previously been displayed. Based on Renarin's eagerness to get rid of his dead shardblade, I'm wondering if he has an even worse experience when coming into contact with one than just hearing screams. Renarin's potential sensitivity to the spiritual realm means he might be having full 'Nam Flashbacks every time he touches a shardblade. Going with your theory, Renarin could unravel the specific nature of the broken oaths that killed a particular spren, while Dalinar could use his (as of yet vaguely elaborated powers) to form a connection between the dead blade and a new candidate.

Ialai. She likely suspects Adolin already, but by duplicating the murder she can just sit in the shadows and watch who is acting strange and INCREDIBLY GUILTY to confirm her suspicions. The future likely holds more murders and mind games to drive Adolin insane from guilt with the ultimate goal of undermining Dalinar when Adolin breaks and confesses.

It's not just Sel though. Threnody is also a magic mess as a result of Odium heavily wounding the shard of Ambition there. Honor was splintered on Roshar but surgebinding seemingly proceeds much the same as before. This implies to me that someone is making certain Honor's investiture is cycling through Roshar in a stable manner. Likely Stormfather, but Cultivation may also be playing a role too.

We know from other WOBs that Roshar was created by Adonalsium, and it had a pre-existing highstorm/spren/other life ecosystem before Honor/Cultivation/humans gate crashed the planet at a later date. I think Stormfather existed originally as this large chunk of investiture powering the highstorms left behind by Adonalsium, which eventually gained sentience over time and developed a personality as a result of how the storm was viewed by the Listeners. When Tanavast/Honor later moved onto the planet, the highstorm became associated with Honor both in function and in the minds of men. I think Honor started infusing a lot of his own investiture into the highstorms at this point, well beyond their original power. Although Odium has splintered the Honor shard and killed Tanavast, the magic systems powered by the Honor shard seem to be largely working as intended (no chaotic magical mishaps like with the Dor). I think this implies that Stormfather is now acting as a caretaker/holder of the power of the Honor shard. As a spren/shadow, he lacks a physical form and thus can't use the shard to its full potential, but he can at least keep the magic from going haywire as Odium would surely prefer. Sort of like role Preservation's Shadow served. So, sorry for the rambling, but I think Stormfather is a confusing jumbled mess currently. He started out as just a large powerful spren personifying the storm, but then became more Honor-like as Honor infused its investiture into the highstorms, got blurred with Honor in the minds of men, and finally got stuck acting as caretaker for Honor's investiture and perhaps containing some element of Honor's shadow. Poor spren probably has huge identity issues.

"What can change the nature of a man?"

I think there's some cleverness at work here from Odium (and Brandon too obviously). We were sort of expecting the Parshmen to mass convert into hulked out murder machines who would immediately start sowing death and chaos all around them. This is the warning that Dalinar has been shouting to the leaders of the world. How much more clever if Odium moves slowly and cautiously. It not only serves to make Dalinar look like a crazy loon for predicting a catastrophe that did not occur, but gives the forces of Odium time to coordinate and plan their first unsuspected strikes. If the conversion of parshmen into voidbringers is facilitated by them being outside in the everstorm, Dalinar's warnings could tragically have the opposite of their intended effect. Those communities that listened to Dalinar and in fear kicked out their parshmen just delivered Odium a fresh batch of recruits. Dalinar dismisses the lack of responses received from world leaders as them being stubborn. A possibility he didn't consider was that the voidbringers simply haven't gone overtly hostile yet.

Calling it now, Kaladin is totally going to have to defend some innocent Parshmen from a pogrom/lynch mob/ethnic cleansing campaign. I will protect even my enemies, so long as it is right.

The parts I enjoy the most are when the action fades and a character drops a quick, yet profound statement that can hit you emotionally like a ton of bricks. Shallan's answer to Hoid's question that beauty is when pain is the least, Spook being reminded that Kelsier was his friend and gave him a name, Shae's comments on how even inanimate objects want to see themselves as beautiful, all the times Kaladin remembers his father telling him that "someone has to start" being good to others, Kaladin giving his "I just wanted to protect them..." line. There's a lot them like that. I think the quick way they're inserted, but then not dwelt upon or explained in detail by Brandon makes them feel more profound because it encourages your mind to dwell on the deeper things.

I think Hoid just wanted the Lord Ruler out of the way so he could grab some Lerasium and bolt. Also Rashek was a full mistborn and feruchemist, presumably granting him access to some freaky compounding abilities we haven't seen in action yet. I imagine he somehow utilized his ability to store and tap fortune in chromium to be in the area when necessary.

Oh definitely, I don't believe in my own theories 100% either, just trying to get some discussion going about something that troubled me in reading Kaladin's chapters. I think Syl is a very nice and well intentioned spren who would never knowingly do Kaladin harm, but that doesn't mean their bond is all sunshine and rainbows either though. I think the trickiest thing with the Radiants/Recreance is that chapter intro written in code that people much more intelligent than me figured out meant, I initially bought into the theory that the Radiants gave up their shards as a well intentioned sacrifice in an attempt to delay/inhibit future desolations, a theory which Nale and certain other Heralds believed themselves. But that doesn't jive with the epigraph above, which seems to imply a secret that can break the radiants even after the desolation and radiant orders have already returned. The two (probably mutually exclusive) theories that I'm pitching seem like they might be going in the right direction though to try to explain that discrepancy though. It feels like it needs to be something personally harmful to the Radiants themselves.

At first sure, you doing the right thing is what draws the spren to you. The concern is more, what about once you're hooked on that sweet, sweet Stormlight? Maybe I'm overly projecting onto Kaladin because I work in healthcare and also have personally have struggled with Seasonal Depression pretty much my entire adult life. But if you asked me to choose between a "right" and a "wrong" action ("right" and "wrong" being labeled by an outside party), with me knowing full well that choosing the "wrong" action would result in: The loss of a skill that I take personal pride in and makes me feel special (spear wielding for Kaladin) A sudden decline in health both physical and mental due to losing access to my habit-forming god-essence gas The death of an imaginary friend who has been a great source of psychological support (I'm stretching a bit here, but I think any of us can imagine being absolutely crushed if we "killed" someone like Syl) It's barely even a choice. Hell, I'd probably do whatever my spren told me was the "right" thing just to keep the happy, pain-soothing, depression dulling stormlight flowing. It's not purposefully coercive on the part of the spren, but at that point, with the known results that I listed above do you even have much of a choice anymore? This isn't even touching on the magical god-like powers angle, just the psychological aspects. (I'm actually a clinical pharmacist irl, and Stormlight honestly does sound like it would be an incredibly habit forming substance. It heals you, it dulls pain, it makes you "feel alive" with a "storm inside", it seems to lessen or at least temporarily distract from psychological pain. These sound like descriptions of the pharmacological effects of opioids or amphetamines to me.)

Sorry to resurrect my own thread but I ran across a Word of Brandon that I think might be adding weight to my "Loss of Free Will" Theory. Hmm, so in addition to the Radiant's having their ability to meaningfully make decisions strongly restricted by their adherence to the oaths they swore, we can also assume that all the sweet Honor Investiture (Stormlight) that they burn through is subtlety causing changes in their very nature. Add to that the fact that using investiture seems to be mildly habit forming (Spook I'm looking at you), and thing are...a little creepy to be honest.

It was heavily wounded though. Like a partial shard lobotomy. A shard in my mind is like a big perpetual cycle of magical energy. The longer a shard stays in a given place, the more of its magic-energy "leaks" into the surrounding environment. As long as the shard remains there, it won't lose said energy (the magic just keeps cycling around the area and energy is conserved), but if the shard bearer tries to move itself it will leave a lot of its "invested" power behind. This is why Ruin couldn't leave Scadrial and go on a death and destruction galactic tour, he was completely invested in the planet (although this was a very extreme example, and Ruin+Preservation created the planet instead of just moving into a pre-existing planet) and thus was stuck there until the planet could be destroyed. This is also why Odium never stayed in one place for too long in past when he was on his shard murder-spree, and it's why he's "trapped" currently in Roshar, somehow the Honor Pact sandbagged him on Braize long enough that he can't leave without being greatly weakened (and being weak would terrify Odium). Even the name "investiture" kind of matches this concept, like the difference between an investment and liquidity in finance. I think the elsewhere that Ambition fled to was just the place where the final deathblow was struck. Where it died is also probably a mess of uncontrolled magic, but lots of it's magic juice was left behind on Threnody when it was wounded and tried to flee, and now that the magic has no higher conscious to guide it the magic is acting in chaotic and dangerous. We had a partial example of this in Mistborn. When Leras partially lobotomized himself to imprison Ruin, the mists started behaving in erratic and dangerous manners, blocking out the sunlight or accidentally killing humans when trying to snap them. Threnody is like that but worse, as it has no higher mind at all to guide the flow of magic down controlled paths.

Thanks to the Arcanum Unbound opening we now know a couple new things about Threnody (which is likely pertinent since Nazh is from there). I think the most important though is that the shard Ambition was heavily damaged by Odium there and left a lot of its investiture behind, likely causing the messed up magic that currently is at home on Threnody: silver weapons, angry ghosts, mysterious force of destruction. Splintering off chunks of shards seems to do chaotic things to a local magic system, I think the closest parallel we have is the Dor on Sel. After Dominion and Devotion got splintered, their magical essences blurred together and now reside almost entirely on the cognitive, but not spiritual realm (I think Brandon said something to this regard in a recent interview). So I'm guessing something about Threnody's weird magical nature has resulted in invested silver objects being cognitive in nature, but not spiritual? I think that would jive with the "spiritual things glow in the cognitive realm" effect. Maybe Threnody silver knives are like partial shardblades: they impact the cognitive+physical (enough to harm a ghost), but don't affect the spiritual+cognitive+physical like a full shardblade does?

I think the temporal connection between Kaladin having his explosive rush of power at the Crown Tower and Taln returning to the world are important. The desolation trigger is probably something like once a Herald throws in the towel on Braize and returns to Roshar, the "door" to Roshar is open. All Heralds get summoned to Roshar and Odium also gets freer reign to intervene on the planet. A big rumble happens, then all the crews return home (for some unknown reason) until the next throw down. The Heralds were pretty smart to all stay behind on Roshar and leave the whole painful responsibility on Taln to resist the torture and delay desolations. I think their partially abandoning their Heraldic responsibilities was kind of like posting a spiritual job opening for the role though. If an individual Radiant started being a better representation of the Heraldic role "Protection, Lawfulness etc., or maybe even just "Honor" in general" than the current Herald they could seize the Herald's shard-splinter and essentially become the Herald them-self, thereby triggering a Desolation. After all, the spren created Radiants in imitation of how Honor created his Heralds. It's hard to think of a pattern of events that could better represent the virtues of protection than what Kaladin went through with Syl to try to save Bridge 4 and later Dalinar's army. There's also some sort of magical Connection and destiny at play too. This is probably the main reason Nale was killing proto-Radiants, to stop them from advancing to the point of Herald-like status. Just like Vin was specially capable of seizing the power of Preservation due to poorly understood genetic/spiritual factors, it seems likely that Kaladin has some sort of natural resonance with Protection/Honor. Although I don't think Brandon will directly repeat the "mortal ascends to God" plotline from Mistborn, I think it is pretty likely that Kaladin is on the path to future Herald status, or even becoming the new holder of a diminished Honor shard (holding the biggest "chunk" of Honor's splintered shard).

He could also just be flat out wrong. That's one thing I particularly enjoy about Sanderson's Cosmere, even the incredibly knowledgeable and powerful characters don't know everything and occasionally make bad guesses based on bad information. As far as we know every desolation before this one was triggered by a very standard set of events. Ishi couldn't really be faulted for failing to predict alternate methods of summoning a desolation as he had no existing data set to draw from. After that, just toss in some all too human self-deception and desperate subconcious fear to avoid future torture, and his clinging to a false belief in the face of overwhelming evidence doesn't seem impossible.

I had similar thoughts when reading and I could also see it going either way. Perhaps Ishi is a traitor or openly lying to the other Heralds to spare himself from further suffering. He could also be in a similar boat as Nale though, going progressively crazy and desperately clinging to a poorly founded theory to avoid having to face an unpleasant reality.

There's a pretty ominous blurb on the back cover of Words of Radiance, that I think might point to a darker effect of the Nahel Bond. I have two theories on what this could mean (which specific one is right I have no clue), but I think we would be naive in assuming the Nahel Bond is a purely positive experience for the recipient. "Men seek what was lost; I fear the quest will destroy them. It is the nature of the magic. A broken soul has cracks into which something else can be fit. Surgebindings, the power of creation themselves; they can brace a broken soul, but they can also widen its fissures" That sounds dark enough by itself, but it gets even more uncomfortable when comparing this to a familiar cosmere magical system (it sounds uncomfortably similar to how a hemalurgic spike cracks open a person's soul to invite outside influence or control). The imagery of cracked souls matches what we've been told so far in Stormlight Archive. Knights Radiant of the past according to Syl were all "broken" people. Being a broken person with a damaged soul seems like a pre-req for spren to be able to form a bond with humans. Indeed (from what we've observed so far), it is frequently only in moments of great psychological stress that the bond between spren and human can be strengthened. This seems like a full boon for our heroic knight, as they gain awesome powers for seemingly no cost. But what if there is a cost? 1) Loss of Free Will Every oath the knight speaks, the tighter their bond with their spren grows. Using the existing cracked soul analogy, one can picture the spren plugging the cracks in the human's soul to make them spiritually whole again (almost like a filling in a tooth cavity). But a more insidious way of seeing this is that the knight's soul is becoming less and less their own, and more and more their spren's. Each oath the knight swears, the more of their soul is bound up with their spren, the more spren-like they become. What's more, this isn't restoring the knight's soul, but only covering up the cracks (with a cover that can be later taken away). Sure swearing those oaths grants you more power, but it also forces you to live your life according to a very strict set of rules. At what point does fear about breaking those rules deprive a human radiant of their free will? At what point do they stop being a human struggling to embrace an ideal, and become just an ideal? I think Kaladin's dark night of the soul at the end of WOR is a poignant example of this. Because he swore conflicting oaths, his power left him, reverting him into his sad pre-Radiant state: chronically depressed, full of pain, and discovering that even skills he thought he had earned on his own (gracefulness with spear) were really only gifts granted by his spren bond. It is only by surrendering to the oaths previously sworn that Kaladin could become a functional human being again. Syl said she didn't want to force Kaladin to do the right thing, but functionally that is exactly what she did! Remembering the shock of his non-Radiant state, Kaladin will likely have something approaching panic disorder if he approaches future oath violations. Again, remember that all Radiants are damaged people. What if they all lived in chronic anxiety of breaking their oaths and reverting to being a non-magical mess again? And what about the addictive nature of stormlight consumption? Would such a constant stress to obey oaths, without the immediate need of a Desolation, be enough to jumpstart the Reacreance? Possibly! 2) I'm cursed - Kaladin makes some repeated ruminations that his continued survival while others fall is a sign that he is cursed. Syl dismisses this as nonsense, and it is our first impulse as readers to just pass this off as Survivor's Guilt on Kaladin's part. But what if he has a kernel of truth there? In Mistborn Secret History we have an interesting scene where Kelsier's shadow is trying to chase Vin around. Preservation loans some power to Kelsier, which temporarily strengthens him, but Ruin quickly responds by crushing Kelsier with mental force. Once Preservation gives up and withdraws his power from Kelsier, Kel notices that Ruin also can no longer restrain him as effectively. I think this was Brandon giving us a clue that competing shards often work in balance of one another, and one shard expanding their power on a human quickly draws the jealous attention of their enemy. What if a similar situation is at play on Roshar? A whole lot of incredibly unpleasant stuff is done to Kaladin and Shallan by the people around them in their life. What if this wasn't just plot convenience? What if Pattern and Syl starting to grant access to power to Kaladin and Shallan shines a spotlight on them for Odium and causes Odium to influence people nearby them to do a heaping of bad stuff in an attempt to break their spirit? It seems awfully coincidental that both of their lives went to hell after their spren first started to observe/bond them. Maybe the Radiants of the past got tired of spren inviting tragic events onto their chosen knights and decided to abandon their oaths as a result? There might be a sort of magical reciprocity at play.