alder24

Striking deals and using his agents to secure 90% of Roshar behind the coalition's back is nothing to you? If not for Gav, Taravangian would have chosen any other innocent person whom Dalinar also wouldn't have been willing to kill - Gav was just cherry on top. The contest wasn't about the fight, it was about philosophy and morality and Taravangian outsmarted Dalinar on this field. WaT ch 137: The contest was literally the same problem Taravangian and Dalinar discussed in OB - Nohadon's problem with 4 people, among which one was a criminal but nobody knew who he was. Taravangian chose to kill them all, Dalinar chose to release them all as for him hurting even one innocent person was unacceptable. This is the same moral dilemma Taravangian had presented Dalinar with. Gav being Odium's champion didn't matter at all, Taravangian did it for drama, it was all about forcing Dalinar to kill one innocent person, which would prove Taravangian's right. Any innocent person. Dalinar's trip to the Spiritual Realm was absolutely necessary for him to Ascend to Honor. Without it, he wouldn't have been able to understand Honor and Ascend to it, which allowed him to find a third way out of this problem and checkmate Taravangian in the end. This wouldn't have worked if someone just told him all of this, he had to live through this to understand Honor. I don't know why people are so confused about it when it was presented so clearly in the book. WaT ch 139: Even if Dalinar was present this whole time, he wouldn't have been able to do anything to prevent secret talks between leaders of nations and Taravangian. There was nothing he could have done to stop them from switching sides in secret. Even Fen switched sides. I agree with you here, I don't like this. That's the reason. He wanted to kill them. Rayse's goal was to become the sole god in Cosmere and he wanted to do it by Splintering all other Shards. He went to Roshar because Honor and Cultivation settled there together, which gave him a weakness to use against them and also to raise an army, because his direct fight with Ambition weakened him too much and he was trying to find an indirect way to attack other Shards - with an army. And Cultivation threatened to gather other Shards and deal with Rayse, like they did with Adonalsium, if he were to leave Roshar. WaT ch 113:

They were Herald's kids, they all carried parts of her in her Spirit Web, they all were affected by it all the time. It's just like Vivenna and Siri and their Returned Blood. I would say they were interested in his wife. I still think that Kelsier and Ghostbloods were involved in killing Chana in some way as Kelsier said to Gavilar that they already put things in motion that would bring the Desolation. What is a better way to start a Desolation than sending a Herald to Braize to break? I wouldn't be surprised if that was because of Ishar, who by holding Odium's power corrupted other Heralds, enhancing their insanity, which affected Chana, which was transferred through her Spirit Web to her kids on a smaller scale.

WaT ch 142: It's about powers, not Vessels. The Shard of Honor wanted to destroy Odium and didn't care about Roshar and its people, the Shard of Preservation always wanted to Preserve people and Scadrial, so no matter how many times it clashed with Ruin, there was no destruction as part of his power was protecting the whole world (the power did this, not the Vessel).

There wouldn't be much to see, especially if nobody is aware of this world. It would depend on how people view those places. Good question. Gemstones maybe?

About the Shadesmar's sun, it seems like each world has its own sun because when Kelsier left Scadrial in search of Ire, the sun disappeared from the sky. SH ch 5-1: So the compass likely doesn't point towards the sun as the sun is local to Roshar only and the compass should change heading in between two locations separated by such significant distance. I also doubt it points towards the Adonalsium's corpse, as the Shattering happened on Yolen and Yolen was said by Khriss to be hidden and hard to find - if there were compasses pointing straight towards it made thousands of years ago, it wouldn't have been hard to find. I think it most likely points towards the location of Ambition's death - it's a corpse of a god, it was a very violent event and from WoBs we know that Odium did something similar to Ambition to what he did with the Dor - not the same but similar. SH ch 3-2:

That's not possible for Dalinar. Tanavast was Honor's Vessel for thousands of years before his death, he kept it under his control and actively fought it to make it stay with him for a little longer. Since Tanavast's death, the power of Honor was so distrustful of people that it refused to accept any new Vessel, fearing they would break their Oaths like Tanavast did. Dalinar had no experience in keeping the power of the Shard under his control, was too fresh of a Vessel to even try keeping it under his control and he didn't break just one Oath, he broke them all. On top of that, Honor was sentient at this point, it had a mind of its own. There was no way for him to keep Honor with him for any second longer. Plus, Taravangian wasn't planning on going anywhere when released - he wanted to stay on Roshar and raise his army. Dalinar's gamble required Taravangian to gain the Shard of Honor. only then would other Shards react to the danger Odium poses. Free Odium alone was not enough for them to act, they had ignored him in the past when he was killing Shards, they would have ignored him again. And Odium itself was already wounded from his battles with Ambition and Honor - alone he wasn't as big of a threat to others and was not enough to force them to unite. Forcing Taravangian to pick up sentient Honor made him the biggest threat in the entire Cosmere, the worst possible scenario happened. Every Shard was forced to take actions and it changed all of Taravangain's plans. He was planning to stay on Roshar and build his army for centuries before attacking other Shards - he couldn't do it because other Shards would have attacked him on Roshar so he was forced to leave Roshar and hide. Moreover, Honor has a mind of his own now, he's already forcing Taravangian to do things he wasn't going to do, like respecting already broken Oaths. The power of Honor also questions his reasoning about treating Gavinor - it is learning what's right and wrong, which in the future will be restraining Taravangian much more than he realizes. He might be a step away from becoming impotent like Harmony is. Taravangian didn't just become twice as powerful, he's now bound to Honor and restricted by what a sentient Shard thinks is right - he gained freedom and lost it at the same moment. Taravangian did it. He chose Gavinor as his champion, he conquered most of Roshar before the contest and showed Dalinar that no matter if Dalinar wins the contest or loses it, Taravangian has already won everything.

He was a 5 years old boy when he was stolen from his family and brainwashed for 20 years into obedience by Odium. He made no choices, he had no agency, he doesn't even remember his time spent with Navani and Dalinar in the Tower. He doesn't know anything other than what Taravangian had shown him. He's not a traitor, he's a tragic victim. Some people might view him as a traitor, but that isn't deserved.

We - the Vessel and the power. I don't think there is any other logical explanation for this right now.

Source on that please? The book doesn't say this.

Kind of. Or rather they are all the same powers of creation, but they manifest differently in different worlds. On Scadrial they manifest as Metallic Arts, on Roshar as Surges. It's possible for more Surges to appear, perception is a factor here. No, that would require ridiculous amounts of investiture. Cadmium and bendalloy specifically manipulate spacetime itself and it's not about the amount of raw investiture that causes time dilation, those metals bend the spacetime around the Misting with minimal power. Otherwise, any time someone burns duralumin would create a time bubble around them, but that's not how it works. Not even a Shardpool produces a noticeable time dilation and that's vastly more investiture than a Misting can get from burning metals. Atium also specifically allows you to see into the Spiritual Realm and it's not something other god metals do (Lerasium modifies your Spirit Web instead).

Seems like some of this damage was focused on the Vessel rather than the power, but the power was still wounded in previous clashes. RoW ch 114: WaT I-4:

The storm he's talking about is the barrier storm around Braize in the Cognitive Realm. There is a constant storm surrounding Braize and Odium splintered a part of it and moved it slowly over years to Roshar, where Listeners were able to summon it. Until they summoned it to the Physical Realm, the Everstorm was physically in the Cognitive Realm, slowly moving from Braize to Roshar. I don't know what would happen if a Slaveform was taken to that storm, while it was in Shadesmar. It's possible it would cure them, but it's equally as likely that the storm needed to be first summoned to the Physical Realm to start working as intended. We have no information about this. RoW ch 86: RoW ch 89:

It's based on the perception of people. The Cognitive Realm is the realm of thoughts and it's highly influenced by how people perceive certain things. On Scadrial Mists are an inseparable part of the world, people think about it all the time, thus souls of objects manifest as mists in the Cognitive Realm of Scadrial. The same thing is happening on Roshar, where beads and gemstones are essential for life and beads manifest in Shadesmar because of that. Every world has a different manifestation of souls in the Cognitive Realm because it depends on people's perception.

Hello, welcome to the Shard. You're asking, if properties of real metals from Earth influenced magical properties of metals on Scadrial? I don't think so. Brandon said that metals in Cosmere have a spiritual component to them that gives them those similar magical properties across different magic systems, so it's all contained within Cosmere. Moreover, at first Brandon planned to have silver instead of tin, not because of some specific chemical properties, but simply because he liked the name "Silvereye." In the end he couldn't find a good alloy pair to it once he realized pewter is not an alloy of silver and Brandon decided to change it into tin. This shows that Bradon likely did not take into consideration real properties of metals when building Metallic Arts, but rather accessibility (he wanted to have some metals that are either rare or don't exist naturally), have a good alloy pair, cool names etc.

Taravangian wanted to make a point. He wanted to prove Dalinar that he was right, that his philosophy was the only one providing good answers. For that, Gavinor was not needed, it was just too good of an opportunity to waste it. Without Gav, he would have chosen any other random innocent person from Roshar, whom Dalinar would have been equally unwilling to kill. WaT ch 136: WaT ch 137: While I wasn't a fan of the child champion theory before WaT, I'm fully satisfied with how it was executed. The contest of champions became meaningless, Taravangian has already won either way. Twisting the contest to be about the clash between two opposing morelities both Taravangian and Dalinar represent, rather than having another flashy duel of swords makes much more sense for Taravangian. He's not a fighter, he's a philosopher and a politician. But even though I'm fine with this, I understand while others might find this disappointing - the set up for the contest was enormous, it goes back to the first book, but here it just became meaningless.

It was Retribution's doing. It was because of the death of the Highstorm and the birth of the True Everstorm, fueled by Retribution's rage. WaT ch 145: That red mist was Autonomy's investiture. TLM ch 19:

I think both 9 and 10. He holds two Shards, both of them have their own numbers.

Seems like this. It looks like Unmades were created when Odium was on Roshar with Desolations already ongoing, but Tanavast also admitted that he missed them being unmade so it's still possible he brought them off-world and hid them from others. WaT ch 120:

They are. Memories are a part of your Spirit Web (which I think was even said in WaT), that's why you can alter them if you modify your Spirit Web. Thoughts are just your mind and your Cognitive Aspect working. He explained it in the book - he stores fresh memories in Breaths to review them at the end of the day and decide which ones to keep and which ones he can forget. He also stores old memories in his Breaths. It makes sense for Hoid to store his memories immediately in Breaths because he doesn't risk forgetting any detail. WaT ch 14: If Hoid had no cells, he would have ended up dead. Taravangian completely vaporized his body. It was gone and dead. Without any living body part to attached to, his soul would be gone as well (although he probably could have become a Cognitive Shadow if he wanted). That's why Ulaam kept a few of Hoid's cells alive so his soul could attach to them and start healing. Once again, memories are a part of the Spirit Web so he would have remember everything that had happened. Breaths are Innate Investiture, they stick to the soul so they should also go with the soul and stick to his new body, allowing him to remember everything and not lose any of his precious memories.

Yes, but also Nale was toying with Kaladin almost through the entirety of this fight. If he was fighting seriously and without using any of his powers, Kaladin would have been killed early on during the fight.

Odium managed to turn Devotion and Dominion against each other, made them fight and then he finished them off when they were the weakest. However, when dealing with Ambition, from Arcanum Unbounded we know they fight directly. something that Tanavast tried to avoid as much as possible because it was so destructive. Nohadon later said that the destruction resulting from the clash of Shards can be reduced or entirely avoided if one of the Shard cares about protecting people - Devotion sounds like a Shard that might have wanted to preserve Sel. WaT ch 113: WaT ch 142:

I haven't thought of this in that way. I thought that Taravangian invested their souls after they were killed by the wave and hid them in SR, but now looking back at those quotes it does seem that they didn't die (unlike Cultivation's forces who were said to die from the wave) Cognitive Shadows are real and aren't a part of the SR simulation so it made sense they were all turned into CS. So, will Taravangian allow them to live and die, or will he mess with their Spirit Web to stop them from aging or even make them into CS and just periodically remove their memories? This is the only way to keep them from discovering that something is wrong, unless he fakes his own death (again).

I believe both explanations are valid and real in Cosmere. You can make a Cognitive Shadow in two ways - either make a copy of their soul out of investiture, or invest them so heavily that they will resist the pull into the Beyond (as we know having more investiture allows one to remain longer in CR). From what WaT showed us, it looks like Kaladin just got insanely invested by a Splinter of Honor, thus he didn't die and left a copy behind, he already was invested enough to become a Cognitive Shadow before he died. But as I said, that's what I believe in.

While it's true, those limitations were already gone after Tanavast died. However, Radiants Orders were established by Ishar himself so they are still standing strong as they are separate from Oaths made by Honor.

Here: Tbf, attracting Gloryspren after you just became a Herald is a very expected reaction - this is the most glorious moment anyone on Roshar could ever dream of. He literally became a demigod.