Siaun Sanche

That makes sense to me. Presumably once Gavilar died he thought he was the best positioned to carry out Gavilar's plan.

Taravangian doesn't want to jump start the Desolation. Taravangian thinks that one is happening anyway, and soon. ("The Desolation needs no usher," in his words.)

Gavilar's motivations, as expressed in the prologue to Eshonai, are a mixture of both interpretations, and I think the first weighs heavier on his mind than the second. If for example Odium is temporarily caged but must be finally defeated, that might be an argument for _somebody_ to take the fight to Odium. But why Gavilar, and why now? He doesn't say that there's a ticking clock--he says basically the opposite. And it's not like he says that he's got a good reason why it should be him to do the fighting, or that the kingdom is particularly well-prepared either. (There are parshmen everywhere in Alethkar, after all.) So why does he want to start the end of the world and fight the battle of Armageddon, according to him? Because life is drab without battle and peace is causing his kingdom to fall apart.

Oh, okay, that does change things. (I must admit, as somebody new to the Sanderson fan community I don't how you guys keep up with all the WoB out there.) I was just thinking about this, and I don't know that Moash has done anything so terrible that a redemption arc would be satisfying. (Not that he didn't try, but like Sideshow Bob once said, they don't give out the Nobel Prize for attempted chemistry.) When I hear about "great plans" for Moash, my initial instinct is: Moash learns about the Diagram, gradually becomes convinced of its wisdom and necessity despite himself, and at the end of book 4 or book 5 he faces off against Kaladin again, each convinced of their own rightness and fighting to the death. To make that story work, he'd probably have to be a Radiant of some kind.

Moash might have viewpoints so that we can follow the Diagramists from a lower-level point of view.

That's for sure. Gavilar is condescending and insulting to Eshonai during that whole conversation, when he's ostensibly trying to win her over. Still, if he elides the most important part of his plan that seems more elliptical and opaque than arrogant. The reason I ask about Amaram is that it's pretty clear that he understood the plan to mean the Parshendi would turn into Voidbringers. From his viewpoint at the end of Words of Radiance: "I can only conclude ... that we have been successful, Restares. The reports from Dalinar's army indicate that Voidbringers were not only spotted, but fought. Red eyes, ancient powers. They have apparently unleashed a new storm upon the world." When he thinks "Gavilar would be proud," he means of the return of the Voidbringers. Now, the sticky wicket here is that Restares is one of the people that Gavilar mentions to Szeth in his last moments as having possibly ordered his assassination. So there's another element to this that we don't understand fully (or at least, that I don't understand). Having said that, I tend to think that Amaram knows the broad strokes of what Gavilar is up to. If Gavilar had a secret plan to get the Parshendi to fight the old gods, then Amaram would have known at least that such a plan existed--because the alternative is that Gavilar made himself seem crazier to Amaram than he really was, and led Amaram to try rust that Gavilar wouldn't have wanted.

I love these, jofwu; I just put one on my lock screen as well.

I'm willing to be convinced on that point, but Gavilar doesn't actually say that to Eshonai, even as she gets upset at the idea of bringing back the old gods. (And it reads to me as if this is the first time that the Parshendi were told that Gavilar wants to do this.) If he wanted to win her over to an alliance against them he's got a funny way of doing it. BTW, in your mind is Amaram working from the same playbook as Gavilar? Or is he going off-track in some way?

I'm torn about this. On the one hand, it explains Kalak's reaction: “I don’t like this. What we’ve done was wrong. That creature carries my lord’s own Blade. We shouldn’t have let him keep it. He—” Sure sounds like Kalak knows what Szeth is about to do, and while he's complaining about it his complaints seem to indicate that he and Nale are in on it somehow. On the other, it doesn't seem like something that Nale would ordinarily attempt. Szeth is plainly breaking the law in assassinating Gavilar, and there isn't an obvious crime that the king could have been guilty of. And if the Heralds wanted it to happen this way, then they want Alethkar and the Parshendi to be at war afterward.

Gavilar at least seems to believe that the next Desolation isn't about to happen unless he kicks it off: "This world is trapped," he says, "stuck in a state of dull lifeless transition." Gavilar doesn't propose an alliance _against_ the old gods either, but an alliance "in seeking the return of your gods," which is an interesting turn of phrase. Not "an alliance against the old gods" or "an alliance against Odium", an alliance to bring back the Everstorm and the old Parshendi gods. Bringing back the Everstorm and the old Parshendi gods means that in short order the Parshendi won't be allies of Alethkar but enemies, fighting in a massive battle. Does Gavilar want that? He sure seems to, because he keeps talking about the need to unite his empire, and how much more glorious the humans and the Parshendi were when they were fighting in the Desolations. Well, he expresses three reasons for trying to kick off a Desolation: 1) He wants to recapture the glories of a bygone age, when life had more purpose than it does now ("My people were radiant once and your people, the parshmen, were vibrant. Who is served by this drab world where my people fight each other and end in squabbles without light to guide them? And your people are as good as worthless.”); 2) He fears that his kingdom will fall apart into squabbles and internecine conflict without an external threat to unite them (" My people need to be united and I need an empire that won’t simply turn into infighting once I am gone."); and 3) He wants to put the whole cycle to an end once and for all. (" I seek for an end to something that we apparently never finished. ") One thing that strikes me about this--and what is maybe driving Emailanimal's reaction--is that goals (1) & (2) are in conflict with (3). If Gavilar did somehow get his wish and put an end to this war against Odium once and for all, then in short order you'd be back to the same drab world of petty squabbles that Gavilar doesn't find very satisfying. The other thing is that it seems a little bonkers to seek a Desolation in order to preserve the unity of the kingdom when Desolations cause kingdoms to fall and take centuries to recover from. Nohadon lost 90% of his people during a Desolation, and he was lucky because his kingdom was still standing. Is Gavilar really going to do better than Nohadon, when he doesn't have ten orders of the Knights Radiant to support him? So at the very least this seems like a plan that he hasn't really thought through logically.

Well, Liss says that she sold Szeth a few weeks before. That doesn't mean that Klade bought him weeks earlier, of course, but nothing says that Klade bought him that day either. And Szeth says this about his clothing: To my mind, the most natural way to read that is that Szeth wore that because he was going to kill somebody (hence why he's doing it "today" and not all the time, and also because it has a specific meaning in the context of assassinating somebody, not just being a killer in general). That was my assumption when I first read the prologue. The other reading (that Klade had him wear it today because they just got him today or just found out he was an assassin today) seems a little strained to me. Having said that, I know it hasn't been checked for continuity issues, so I wouldn't be surprised if this is just the nature of it being a first draft. One or two sentences about how Klade hadn't arrived at the feast yet and Eshonai wanted to rush to convince him to bring Szeth along would do the trick.

I'm confused about the timing. If this is the same night as the assassination (which BS says in his intro), and Eshonai is the one responsible for having Szeth to kill Gavilar (which the chapter seems to say), then the Parshendi didn't plan until they had already arrived at the feast that this was going down. But Szeth came to the feast wearing white because he was going to assassinate the king.

I think Kalak would be interesting for book 4. I tend to think that it would be Kalak rather than Nale to keep a little bit of mystery about how much Nale knows.

If these aren't written by Brandon Sanderson, I wouldn't assume that they're that descriptive of what the character arcs in Oathbringer are really centered. I wouldn't assume that the person who wrote this copy has read the full manuscript, for example. We know that Kaladin is going back to help his family and it seems logical to imagine that he'll have to deal with the Parshendi there and his feelings about that, but that doesn't mean that his arc over the whole book is Parshendi-centric.

BS announced a second Windrunner would be appearing in Oathbringer?

Wouldn't he prefer that his father suspect he was still out there somewhere? He did send Hoid down as a messenger to say that he "has eyes nearby, and is watching," because he wants his father to fear retribution for any harm done to the family. If Helaran wants to play dead, it can't be for his father's benefit. The last thing he would want is his father armed with a Shardblade _and_ feeling like he had a free hand to torment his children.

Why would Helaran want his father to have a Shardblade? He thinks that his father is a monster.

That's a fair point. This theory assumes that Talak (who is a guy that Liss hired three weeks before this scene) becomes very loyal to Liss (and both to Jasnah) over the intervening 6 years. Did that happen? Who knows. I don't believe we see Liss again, unless there's a reference that I'm not familiar with, so really there's a lot of unanswered questions there. Well, Shallan says that it's Helaran's blade because she saw Helaran with it. But Helaran got it from somewhere, and his father (a dubious source, perhaps?) seems to have believed that he got it from his 'new friends', i.e., whatever group he was then aligned with. In any case, Shallan doesn't necessarily know where he got it from, just that he had it at that point. And to be clear, this is 98% speculative. I was halfway proposing it so that I could see where the holes are. (One problem that I can't reason my way around is why Liss would have given it to Helaran--we don't know enough about what else he might have been up to when he came down to see his family.) Having thought about this, I think I still lean towards Helaran being dead. I tend to agree. I think for the theory to work, you need a particular, established character to be the proposed assassin, and not just posit that such a character would exist.

"Keenspren" are the kind that expand your critical threat range, right?

I was just re-reading the prologue to Words of Radiance and I think I may be coming around on this conspiracy theory, sort of. Or at least the Helaran is still alive piece of it. I was skeptical that there'd be another red-headed Veden running around with secret society connections that we never heard of--but oh ye of little faith, because it turns out that there is "a Veden brute with red speckling his beard" that works for Liss. BS brings him up twice in that chapter, and even tells us his name (Talak). Liss doesn't necessarily have a rooting interest herself, but she works with Jasnah a lot and Jasnah certainly does. In the prologue she runs into Nalan talking about Szeth and thinks that she needs to look into him further. She also knows that Amaram and Gavilar were up to something right before the assassination. So there's reason to think that she would be investigating both the Sons of Honor and the Skybreakers, and it seems reasonable to conclude that she'd oppose them both. (I don't currently recall if she talks about either of them by name.) So perhaps Jasnah is behind both Helaran seeking out the Skybreakers (because she wants a man on the inside) and the attempted assassination of Amaram (because he's up to some evil crap). And it just so happens that we know two important things about Liss that she's keeping a secret: (a) she's a woman; and (b) she kills people with a Shardblade. But because it's a very gender-stratified society, perhaps there are times when it makes sense for her to give her Shardblade to a man (be it Helaran or Talak) temporarily, because a male Shardbearer can operate in public but a female Shardbearer would attract unwanted attention. So for example if the Weeper assassinated Amaram, that would draw more attention than if he simply fell in a minor border skirmish. And since there were no other Shardbearers on the field that day and Shardbearers basically never get killed by normal soldiers, it would seem to be a minor risk... until Kaladin screws up the play and Amaram winds up with Liss's Blade. (So why do in-the-know people think that Helaran is dead? Because he didn't join the Skybreakers under his real name to avoid uncomfortable questions about what his real motivations are and who he's connected to. Talak's death is a useful way to maintain his cover.) I don't know that I 100% believe this theory that I just came up with, but I'll be checking in Oathbringer for Liss to show up complaining that she doesn't have her Shardblade anymore...

So if that's the case, Helaran isn't a Surgebinder (because he both wouldn't be able to wield a regular Shardblade and also wouldn't need one); and yet Taravangian is clearly under the impression that he is. Why would that be?

I think the combination of this being another red-headed Veden noble _and_ a Ghostblood assassin prevents any simple solution to this problem, to be honest. If he got it from the Ghostbloods and gave it back, why would they give it to a guy who looked a lot like him? If he gave it to a friend, why did that person turn out to be an assassin for a secret society? There is wiggle room, but not as much as you're saying.

Depending on how many troops stayed behind with Taln, Ishar could have killed them as well. But if Taln is like to get himself killed anyway, Ishar could have been more subtle. If he has any influence on battlefield communications, deploying reinforcements, or so forth, then he could do a lot to ensure that Taln's forces were overwhelmed. (And Guiding is one of his attributes; presumably this is within his wheelhouse.) There's no reason why he should have do anything big and splashy like kill another Herald when a Desolation should offer so many other possibilities for mischief. And if I can go from speculation to wacky conspiracy theories... maybe it's no miracle that only Taln died. If Ishar and Odium are working together, couldn't he direct his forces knowing that the only Herald he really wants to kill is the one too stubborn to quit no matter what? He could in essence be throwing this Desolation in order to bag a more lasting victory.

I've always liked Shallan. In WoK I liked how her story was a nice tonal break from the Shattered Plains, and made the world seem a bit larger. As a character she always wanted to know more about what I want to know more about, so that helps a lot too. WoR only made me love her more: her backstory was great and her rise in confidence/power/influence was compelling. I tend to agree that there's a little part of her that hasn't 100% decided where her real loyalties lie, and to me that's what makes her such a great character. I think it's much easier to imagine where Dalinar will be at the end of Oathbringer than Shallan. I 100% agree with this. Kaladin can be petty and self-destructive in WoR, and it makes his story great. I love when he interrupts Adolin's big move against Sadeas to call out Amaram and it completely falls flat on its face. I don't want a character who is always going to make wise decisions, because that's hard to care about. To me it's more interesting to watch the heroes be unsure what they should be doing or what they want to be doing.

After Words of Radiance, I think my favorite character is probably Shallan. There are a lot of layers to her, and I'm really intrigued to see where she goes next. My favorite scene is probably Kaladin and Szeth's fight at the end of WoR; I don't normally have this kind of reaction to a book, but it gave me chills, I was laughing out loud with delight, I was pumping my fist in the air (it's a good thing I wasn't reading it in public, I guess), and generally I thought it was awesome.