robardin

I like these all Even the in-world "Knights of Wind and Truth", with as close to an eyewitness account of What Went Down In Shinovar as there is based on Szeth and Nightblood's later testimonies, doesn't include the forming of the New Oathpact: Szeth was unconscious at the time, and Nightblood was in an Investiture-gorged stupor. In fact, the author, Szeth's wife, personally helped him bury Kaladin's body with its burned-out eyes. So if any of his friends are still around for whenever and whatever prompts a Return from the New Heralds (not another Desolation, any more... But what?), they're gonna be gobsmacked! I hope that it's relatively soon in SA6, and Kaladin just casually strolls in, darkeyed once again, to Jez's Duty in Urithiru while Adolin and Shallan are there, and reminds Adolin that he owes him a drink. "Oh, and who's this little guy? Cute kid!" I gave one way that Lopen could reach the Fourth Ideal in my OP, LOL, but I'm sure that won't be it :D. Though it'd also be funny if Lopen was cagey about what his Fourth Ideal was. What's left of the Diagram? Could they also form some scriptural part of whatever the new religion worshiping Retribution might be? Though I guess the Fused and singers would have some input as well?

Given that the newly disintegrated Hoid reincorporated on Scadrial soon after the faked "coach accident" with Wax's uncle Edwarn, the Set had already been machinating there. I guess with the time dilation thing, and if Hoid's regeneration took a few weeks, it'd be possible that Retribution was involved in setting those events in motion, in cahoots with Autonomy or else (less likely?) manipulating her into moving against Harmony and Scadrial (I say "less likely" because Autonomy has been doing what she's doing for far longer than Taravangian has been a Shard)

Agree on the first boldfaced point, but on the second one... He's already left, hasn't he? Or rather, is already planning to do so at the end of WaT, because many or all of the other Shards were now going to band together against him that he was freed from Roshar: "The trap" being: hey, you all better do something about this Taravangian guy who's now Retribution while he's still new to the game!

So after reading RoW and before WaT was released, I had analyzed that there was now a significant power imbalance between Team Odium and Team Dalinar with the discovery of anti-Light. Producing weapons with raysium tips to "suck Investiture out" was already something the Fused had to drain Radiants of Stormlight to prevent healing or Surgebinding (spear tips and daggers), and reversing the direction to "inject" Investiture was not all that useful a property, except to transfer captured Stormlight into a gem, or a special case like wanting to inject Voidlight into the Sibling. With the discovery of anti-Light, though, injecting anti-Voidlight could permanently and violently end a Fused or destroy a voidspren; and similarly, anti-Stormlight could kill a Radiant spren, or cause a Radiant full of, or drawing in Stormlight to die. Creating anti-Light is quite simple, once known: you just need a vacuum, be able to reproduce the right tone for the Light (including having a metal plate or strip of the right length/frequency), and the Intent to invert the tone for the Light you had on hand. But, these injection weapons still require raysium, something Team Dalinar would only have in the form of captured weapons. And the "basic" Light to invert? Voidlight was hard for Team Dalinar to acquire (must capture gems filled by the Song of Prayer, or direct touch of Odium as we see in his meeting with El), while Stormlight could be acquired just by leaving gems out in the periodic highstorms. So Team Odium was WAY more able to produce anti-Stormlight weaponry than Team Dalinar could have responded with anti-Voidlight weaponry. But now... There is no more highstorm. There is no more Stormlight, or even Voidlight. There is only Retribution, and Warlight. So what now? First, where did all that raysium come from, and will there be any more? Was Odium able to just "drop" raysium for his followers, or was there some kind of a mine with it that they could dig it out and refine? If it was the latter, that should be stable even after Retribution's Ascension. Otherwise, if Harmony on Scadrial is an example, it's pretty much impossible for a merged Shard to "drop" pre-merged godmetal (if that is even under their conscious control); it'd come out as taravangium, or whatever the metal for Retribution should be called. Second, was all the anti-Stormlight or anti-Voidlight also inhaled by Retribution? If not, what effect would they now have on someone holding Warlight (or Towerlight)?

There are any number of reasons Preservation couldn't just "make more Mistborn" very easily. For starters, it'd be the same reason Mistborn hadn't existed at all on Scadrial until after Rashek's (temporary) Ascension: while all humans on Scadrial were "slightly more" invested of Preservation than Ruin, and thus not only had sentience but also the potential for Allomancy (which occurred naturally but very rarely pre-Rashek), it was unnatural to be that Connected to Preservation's power. Even when "mistsnapped", when the mists gave a bit of a boost of Preservation's power to people and thus enabling some theretofore non-Allomancers to become Mistings, they never created full Mistborn. All Mistborn resulted from direct ingestion of concentrated Preservation (lerasium), or via the direct touch of Preservation, in Rashek twiddling himself while Ascended, or Harmony giving Spook a healing and a power boost. Or are people descended from such upgraded ancestors. I think Sazed was only able to do such a thing to Spook, as well as to rearrange and to re-seat Scadrial and to create the Basin, when first Ascended to Harmony; the Shardic Intent would probably prevent him from doing quite so much so directly in a pretty short time. Leras' Ghost could not even do that much, as by that point he was unraveling quite a bit. And by the time Kelsier held the power, Ruin was free and could completely block him if he'd tried to do something so significant as to upgrade a Misting to Mistborn via direct intervention. (Kelsier couldn't even heal Spook from his burns, despite their extra Connection allowing him to talk to him.) As for "dropping more lerasium", I'm not sure how that works for a Shard or if it's different for different ones, but there never were that many to begin with, so maybe it's just naturally very hard/rare to do for Preservation. Like, there's this WoB that Rashek did not "congeal" the ones he got while Ascended, they were already on Scadrial from its creation, and he learned of their existence and "had to go get them". If there were something like ten given to the founding "kings" of the noble houses, plus the two Rashek kept near the Well (one ended up going to Hoid and one to Elend), well that adds up to 12? Surely there should have been sixteen?

Interesting. I mean, it's clear in RoW (after he'd killed Jezrien) that Vyre was bonded to it, was able to access Windrunner Lashings thereby, and needed Stormlight to heal (but for his eyes) after falling from the sky outside Urithiru. So mechanically it still functioned the same even before Honor merged into Retribution. But it does raise another question in my mind now: what was Ishar's original plan, even as Crazy Ishar, with Szeth? It seems like he was grooming him to be worthy of taking Jezrien's place in a renewed Oathpact of SOME sort, even if it would have been a weird, possibly impossible one. But he'd been working on Szeth for years before engineering him to be sent out as Truthless with that Honorblade, which in turn was years before he ended up being "bought" by the Parshendi and used to kill Gavilar, etc., etc... ... Did Ishar foresee Jezrien's murder in the wake of another Desolation??? (Being why he sent Szeth out with Jezrien's Honorblade?)

I would assume that it has not been "corrupted", and that Vyre can still use it just like he used it before the power of Honor merged with that of Odium, except powered with Warlight. Now you would think it represents an imbalance in the power of Honor, being as it's still a measurable piece of Honor's investiture in Blade form, and now there are eleven of them with Kaladin's Honorspear being formed from the same power... Unless you mean, maybe it remote-dissolved Jezrien's Honorblade in forming Kaladin's Honorspear of the Windrunners? That would be interesting. Eventually we will find out, either through WoB, SA6 in ten years, a novella that takes place in between, or some offhand remark in another Cosmere work referencing events on Roshar.

Narak worldport. A wretched hive of scum and villainy... We must be cautious.

So in a world without Stormlight, can the Heralds still fuel their Surgebinding with some kind of “direct link to Honor” once bonded to their Honorblades again? And Kaladin, I assume he like Nale could have TWO Shardblades, one the Honorblade and one from his spren. Or two spears. Or, one Honorspear and one Sylshield, as well as windspren Plate?

Actually, if you read carefully, the listeners at Narak are granted free (no strings attached) use of infused spheres of Warlight in order to fuel their powers as Willshapers and to grow crops, and El noted that the terms of the ceding of the Shattered Plains to the "listener nation" (who occupied it at the time of the Contest) by Jasnah, Queen of Alethkar (the previous "legal owner"), included "tariffs on any use of the Oathgate" at Narak, and rental income for the "land to the humans for their lumberyards and farms" on the Shattered Plains. Put those two together and it's possible that the Oathgate at Narak can still function with Warlight, and that they will be able to operate it to link to Urithiru, with humans still operating farms on the Shattered Plains. (Highprince Sebarial can breathe a sigh of relief!) Combine that with the fact that they control access to the only Perpendicularity left on Roshar, Retribution's Shardpool, and Listenerland is going to be pretty well set up, as long as they can defend their hegemony.

True, but the surprising thing is that the mechanics of advancing in Ideals in the Nahel Bond allowed for it.

Right. Which means Lift is going to be really useful if she ever gets out of Urithiru, as someone who can produce her own Investiture by metabolizing food into Lifelight. The listener Willshapers apparently can power their Surgebinding as well as to raise crops with Warlight (obtained with that midnight "request for blessing" which did not count as accepting him as their god), as Retribution had told Venli and the others that "for now, the listeners were allowed his Light to fuel their powers, should they wish it". We don't know if those infused gems leak as much as Stormlight infused spheres used to do, or if they could/would trade them to the Windrunners in Azimir (which is pretty far away). I would assume if Willshapers can use them for Surgebinding, they would be able to as well (it's not like Venli is the only one who can use Warlight, due to the Voidspren still in in gemheart being why she could Surgebind with Voidlight earlier). And we've seen in TSM that it's possible for a Radiant to "convert" Investiture to power their Surgebinding and healing, though the technique may have to be discovered (and likely discovered by the spren, rather than the human).

Nice catch -- I didn't remember that detail (when does he say it?). I always thought NAle "eventually joined his own order" after reclaiming his Honorblade after Aharietiam, and the Coppermind entry (as of right now, not yet updated for WaT) suggests the same: At some point before the Recreance,[37] Nale secretly retrieved his honorblade from Shinovar and bonded his own highspren, officially joining the Skybreakers. He is the only known Herald to have joined their order.[38]

This is an interesting point, because the most recent breakaway "dissenter" Skybreakers broke away just before Ishar began molding Szeth, so it can't have been that long ago. Unless Nale's comment about how Ishar "wanted to make a true soldier out of you [Szeth]. He did not like me or my Skybreakers much at the time, as this was right after Billid and his dissenters broke off from me with their traitorous spren" is another example of how an immortal Herald doesn't really have a good grasp of mortal time. Which also means there's probably some group of Skybreakers out there who did not swear to Odium. I find it hard to believe that Nale's "information" about the Skybreaker Ideals is wrong, I mean he was involved with them from inception and has seen innumerable Skybreakers, before and after Aharietiam, and became a Skybreaker himself sometime after Aharietiam. I would assume the Ideals he is enforcing are surely the ones he himself underwent in his journey to the Fifth Ideal. And since part of his "going mad" was to become more and more rigid, what used to be a more personal journey (the way we see Teft, Lopen, Huio, etc., all have different "flavors" of the Second and Third Windrunner Ideals) is now "Skybreakers under my direction must follow my template for progressing in Ideals, both highspren and human alike". Another tell is that however the highspren in Nale's orthodoxy form the Nahel bond with their humans, it's different than normal: they maintain a distance somehow so that the availability of the Surges are under the spren's control, and forswearing the bond did not result in a deadeye (with B-a-M imprisoned). And Nale's spren admonishes 12124 for getting "too close" with his human.

Because of the Honor within him!

Yep. So sad to think of all those singers forced through the Elsegate and now burdened with student loans at usurious rates. They'll never pay off more than the interest!

I think it's because Honor was the Dalinar side of the equation, and the fact that Honor's Champion abjured all his oaths and abrogated the contract makes the "kind of like a pre-teen human's level of self-awareness after so long without a Vessel, which is more than other Shards have btw when first un-Vesseled" element of "Honor" feel like it owes the contract itself something. DALINAR was an oathbreaker, but WE'RE not oathbreakers... The fact that Odium and Honor are now merged, means even MORE so that the contract between Odium and Honor should be, well, honored by Odium+Honor = Retribution! Does that make sense? It also is kind of a narrative requirement, otherwise Retribution could just destroy or dominate the pockets our surviving SA1-5 heroes find themselves in and that would be a terrible story.

I didn't think that need to be leading anywhere; instead it was fulfiling something. I always thought it was interesting (funny) back in Oathbringer I think it was, when Kaladin comments about Drehy "courting a man" to Sigzil who concernedly asks if Drehy had "filled out the right papers yet", to Kaladin's amusement about the ways of the Azish. So now we meet someone who is Azish, and has "filled out the paperwork". Gender reassignment is so much easier culturally if just you have a license for it, eh? LOL.

Only directly affect, I could believe. But that wasn't really my point -- not whether he could personally and directly destroy specific people, but move against nations and cities. That point being, as of the end of WaT, there's nothing "pactful" keeping Retribution from destroying Azir the way he had Kharbranth, or at the very least invading it with Fused and singers and all the other allied forces he could bring to bear from all the other Rosharan nations sworn to him, because the contract that bound him to leave Azir alone if he didn't conquer it by the Contest of Champions (even with the loophole of "who sits in the literal seat of power, the throne of Azimir") was dissolved when Dalinar took the mantle of Champion of Honor, and then instead of fighting Gavinor to the death, renounced all oaths and contracts. It seems the aspect of Honor within him wants to keep to those terms, regardless: Which I found interesting. After which decision he feels the power of Honor "bonding more fully" into Retribution. So he directly controls 90% of Roshar, and can still put at least economic pressure on the remaining 10%. And (which I noticed on a re-read of that part), Retribution is planning on leaving Roshar (now that he can) and leaving a regent to rule in his place (presumably El).

Hoid was afraid of Odium's smiting fist already before RoW, as he told Dalinar in WoR that if "the father of hatred" found him, he'd be soul-shredded (which somehow is not what Retribution did to him, which was just a physical vaporization that he found a workaround for). When Cultivation told him about only being able to touch those who "belonged" to him, because of "the pact my predecessor made", I had assumed to be part of the Oathpact: But you're saying the "pact" being referenced was instead something all sixteen Shards agreed upon, at the Shattering? If that's the case, then it only restricts a Shard from literally smiting someone one-on-one directly. We saw T'Odium destroying Kharbranth with a tsunami, and similarly Ruin causing devastation in Mistborn: Secret History with natural disasters that Vin-Preservation was unable to fully prevent. And as for the healing, if the pact was to forbid taking direct action "against" someone not fully given to them, what about healing as an action "for" someone? As he later freeze-frames Gavinor in the Contest duel while commenting on how there was a loophole in that the contract prevented him from fixing the fight in any way against Honor's champion, but not from fixing the fight FOR Honor's champion.

Yes, I was going to mention/ask about that, too. The relevant epigraph, written six years afterwards by Masha-daughter-Shaliv: Much of what I know of the Knight of Wind, I get from Jasnah Kholin. Now head of our order, and a woman who has shown much patience for a simple Shin bookworm who thinks herself worthy of the task of writing this account. Which raises a number of questions, like: how did she communicate with Jasnah in Urithiru, with no or very few spren around any more? Via Nightblood? And, what did she mean by "head of our order" -- is this still a "school of scholarship" thing, e.g. the "Veristitalians", or has Masha bonded an inkspren to become an Elsecaller as well? That would be interesting.

Good catch, the "little purple cremling" was obviously part of a Dysian Amian, but the reaction of the ones with Rysn should indicate that that Amian's allegiance was different from those... I am guessing the one (or one of the ones) aligned with the Ghostbloods? Not too many other "factions" left, eh?

The problem is, her "contract" with Odium is probably still binding. And the reason they're able to form the New Oathpact is because they contain so much of Honor from being made Heralds in the first one, which in turn is going to hold her to that, even if she made it while "corrupted".

I was wondering the same thing. If the contract for the Contest was torn up by Dalinar, doesn't that mean Retribution is completely free? Not just to leave Roshar, but also to do things like directly smite people now. Which he did right quick to Hoid, who was specifically protected in that contract, so yeah it's done with. In which case, one wonders why he left Azir and Narak (the Land of Listeners) alone. Even letting the sun shine down on Azir! Doesn't seem like he had to. On the other hand, his contract with Fen and Thaylenah still stands, that was made directly with Odium. Plus whatever conditions may have been spelled out in terms of other lands that had surrendered voluntarily to Odium earlier.

Wait, what happened to Lirin then? Also, how is Szeth getting into Urithiru?