Dlyol

This all solved quite nicely by the Fused/Regals distinction we see. Stormform, like Envoyform and I'm assuming all the forms in the listener songs are Regals and so do not need to correlate with a Surge or Radiant order. We can tell this because Eshonai is still herself, if corrupted, when she is in Stormform as opposed to being replaced by a Fused. Fused are the ones we see using Surges and Voidlight in a manner that resembles Radiants but I'm not sure what we'd describe Regal powers as - although I suppose Venli's Connection thing is essentially Spiritual Adhesion so they might have the use of a slight portion of a Surge. That's Cohesion which he gets from the fact that Yelig-Nar grants all ten Surges. Warform is not a Form of Power so it likely doesn't relate to any order

Yeah sorry, I was quite drunk when I posted that

This isn't strictly true. Preservation and Honour aren't very good at seeing into the future because it doesn't accord with their intent but Honour explicitly says that Cultivation can because it does accord with her intent. Shards have essentially infinite power but they are limited by mind of their vessel and by their intent. So those Shards with which future sight accords with their intent can and do see into the future and any inaccuracies in doing so are caused by limitations inherent to the nature of their power

The comparison with Hrathen is interesting in that Hrathen has always struck me as quite similar to Dalinar. They're both middle aged men undergoing crises of faith and whose arcs revolve around coming to terms with the terrible things they've done in their lives. (They are also my two favourite Sanderson characters by quite a distance). Given that in many ways Taravangian is the anti-Dalinar I wouldn't be at all surprised if Taravangian's long term arc ends being quite similar to Hrathen's.

My quibble with this Willshapers making Dawncities idea is that the other things we know of as 'Dawn-' which are the Dawnsingers and Dawnshards both predate humanities arrival on Roshar whereas the Radiants obviously don't. The Singers were already there and the Dawnshards were on Ashyn. In fact we see Kholinar complete in the time of Nohadon which was before the establishment of the Radiants (although not before human surgebinding). My longtime assumption is that the Dawncities were built by Singers as the connection between them, the Rythmns and the sound based nature of Cymatics seems too obvious to ignore. I am open, however, to the idea that given we know Surgebinding existed on Roshar before humans arrived, that the Singers used Cohesion in conjunction with the Rythmns to build the Dawncities

Dark One has been moved out of the cosmere according to this years State of the Sanderson https://brandonsanderson.com/state-of-the-sanderson-2017/ As for Obrodai I'm fairly certain it is First of the Sun due to this WOB

@Wit Beyond Measure Yeah it is although do not read Secret History until you've read all the Era 2 Mistborn books because it has massive spoilers for Bands of Mourning

@Wit Beyond Measure My understanding is that the latter WOB supersedes the earlier one because in the second he says that the nature of the investiture is such that it cannot be perfectly contained whereas in the former he's talking more about the function of chasmfiends from a storytelling perspective and so I think he's being a little loose in his language (for example he says Szeth is correct in this one when elsewhere he makes clear he's not). On the perfect gemstones there's a lot of speculation they may be Dawnshards (I don't buy it) but it's the best theory we've got at the moment. For reference here's the full WOB

We have WOB confirming that humans arrived on Roshar from Ashyn. Braize came to be known as Damnation because thats where the Heralds go to be tortured

Braize is one of the planets of the Roshar system. As for the Spiritual realm, I suggest you read Secret History although this Coppermind article will do in a pinch https://coppermind.net/wiki/Realmatic_Theory

My reading of the WOB is that no living thing can act as a perfect Stormlight store although I may be wrong. Certainly Chasmfiends don't because their gemhearts once extracted are very good but not perfect - my assumption is that the length of time it can hold it scales in proportion to the increase in scale (so a gem heart with twice the radius can store 8 times as much etc) but I'm not sure on that

Yeah I agree with all this. Perhaps I should have been clearer that I was responding to the OP's suggestion that the 2nd black sphere was Ulim when in my view its likely Yelig-Nar

Although irritatingly I can't find it at the moment there is a WOB somewhere that Szeth is wrong when he says that the Singers don't leak, they are more efficient but not perfect stores of investiture OB states that those Fused which become Thunderclasts are simply the ones who have been most damaged by the process of becoming Fused. They are furthest along the line we see of worsening sanity amongst the Fused Edit: Found it

I just discovered this WOB (it's quite long but the relevant bit is at the end) which I'm taking as confirmation that the black sphere is indeed Yelig-Nar

We have a WOB that says otherwise We also have WOB that the Stormfather and the Nightwatcher are on the same power level (as presumably is the Sibling) I think that the Honourspren was aghast relates more to the fact that post-Radiance lots of Spren are wary about Nahel bonds and given Honourspren share a close relationship with the Stormfather, many (although not all) might not have wanted him to bond again

So State of the Sanderson 2017 is out and in it Brandon says So, Rysn novella confirmed get hyped!

I think it was @Patrick Star who pointed this out originally but this video describes exactly how I imagine Willshapers fighting

Except that Wyndle is surprised that Lift can do this implying this isn't something other Edgedancers can do. I don't know if we have a WOB saying this in so many words but I think what is broadly surmised as having happened is that Lift went to the Nightwatcher to ask not to age ever, Nightwatcher didn't know how to do this so instead moved her slightly into the cognitive realm. This is why she can metabolise food into Stormlight and also why she was able to enter Dalinar's visions and can see Szeth's afterimages

I don't dispute that Division has the potential to be extremely dangerous (in fact I have a slightly cracky theory that the Skybreakers shattered the Plains circa the time of the Recreance). My point is two-fold. We have lots of evidence that historically the Dustbringers weren't evil. Two that we have a fairly clear timeline of the early days of Roshar and we know the Radiants were founded well after the Humans had abandoned and the Singers had adopted Odium as their God. Said Timeline is: Humans arrive from Ashyn -> First Desolation (humans as Voidbringers) -> Singers anger attracts them to Odium, and visa versa, leading to the Fused and the Second Desolation (Singers as Voidbringers) -> The Oathpacts between Honour and the Heralds -> Spren begin to copy the powers of the Honourblades -> Inspired by Nohadon, Ishar forces the Surgebinders to form orders mediated by Oaths In this timeline, it is fairly clear that the humans had become of Honour and the Singers of Odium long before the Radiants were formed so the Radiants and the Voidbringers were never the same thing. So, therefore, the Dustbringers cannot have been the Voidbringers although they now might side with them because of this timeline and the evidence we have that post-founding they were not of Odium. All of which is to say that I think the association of Dust and Void you detect is basically coincidental

I remember when the preview chapters came out and Dalinar did his nifty trick with Shallan to generate the map of Roshar, it was widely assumed on here (including by myself) that that was his resonance but now it seems fairly obvious to me that is a use of Spiritual Adhesion. He touches Shallan and in so doing is able to Connect her to the Stormfather who he, of course, is already Connected to and so she can use his vision of Roshar to craft a map. So that points to a multitude of uses of Spiritual Adhesion whereby the Bondsmith can be the intermediary between a Radiant and his/her surges and the particular gifts and insights of their unique Spren.

We actually know that Willshapers can Transport into the Cognitive realm due to this WOR epigraph So Lightweavers interact with the CR through Soulcasting, Willshapers through transportation and Elsecallers are primary Spren diplomats because they get both. This doesn't preclude Willshapers being able to transport in the Physical, in fact I suspect they and the Elsecallers can both do this as we have a WOB (which I can't find because I'm on my phone) that the surges act broadly the same between orders of which the only evidence to the contrary is a hugely dubious statement by the Stormfather. Edit: Found it. So while there is some variation I think suppositions of massive differences between orders in their use of surges is off base

On the point about Dustbringers, the Part 3 epigraphs of Oathbringer did a great job of showing that at least historically they were not the sorts of violent, destructive people a lot of us assumed they were before Oathbringer. This doesn't strike me as misdirection on Brandon's part as the misdirection would be for the present era whereby due to the Recreance, the Ashspren have abandoned Honour which we knew about anyway. Every time we have seen Dustbringers historically, primarily one of Dalinar's visions where one fights a Thunderclast and in the aforementioned epigraphs they have been acting exactly as one would expect from a Knights Radiant. @Wit Beyond Measure I think perhaps you are overreading that one WOR epigraph a little bit much. For reference here are those OB epigraphs

I agree with the theory that the Diagram is of Cultivation and as we have seen in Oathbringer with Dalinar she is very good at playing a discrete but effective long game to get what she wants but I just want to comment for a moment on how dumb Taravangian's 'only saving Kharbranth' idea is. It's actually a really neat bit of characterisation from Brandon given that this is meant to be one of Taravangian's stupidest (at least in an intellectual sense) and most caring days. Kharbranth is a city-state that depends for everything on there existing in the rest of Roshar a functioning economy to provide the goods and services it needs to survive. If the rest of Roshar is destroyed (which I find to be more likely in the long term than simply given over to the Singers given Odium views them as tools not as people he bears any affection for) then what will Kharbranth eat or use as building materials or any of the other things a city-state needs but cannot produce on its own. Furthermore, given Odium's endgame is to leave the Rosharan system, what is to stop the Singers if they do now control the rest of Roshar from deciding they would like to own Kharbranth as well and simply taking it given the massive strategic superiority they would enjoy. In fact, it is such a stupid idea that I almost wonder if Brandon inserted it so that at some point in the future Taravangian can realise how stupid it is and defect away from Odium's side if that what he wants to do with the character long term.

This is all true but I think it answers a slightly different point. This is an argument for broken Spren feeling pain which I'm sure they would do. My point is only true Spren express themselves verbally or in an audible fashion. So while, therefore, it makes sense that their pain would take the form of screams, it doesn't follow that lesser Spren that exist otherwise non-verbally would suddenly become verbal when broken. Animals can make noise, generally and so we can hear them whimper and so on when they are in pain but the same doesn't follow for lesser Spren - even if they are still in pain which I'm sure that under this model they are. As an aside, this is interesting from Adolin describing what I think everyone assumes is Jasnah's plate precursor This is not to say that it isn't Stormlight, although I don't personally believe it is, indeed under your model it could still be Stormlight but it feels like kind of thing Brandon says to foreshadow Plate is not Stormlight

I'm not certain this follows. Nahel Spren are Sapient, lesser Spren only sentient if that. It makes sense that given that, unlike lesser Spren, Nahel Spren express themselves when unbroken, they would do so when broken and lesser Spren would not. Even if this is not exactly whats going, there is clearly a difference in kind between true Spren and lesser Spren that means that it is not obvious that they would act in the same way when broken.