alder24

If they wanted to make a bomb they would just mix it with Voidlight, not kill the Pursuer. The last option is the most likely, but there can be another - kill as many True Spren as possible. Odium already has forces stationed in CR, they control several towns and cities - they can strike with no warning and kill spren en masse. It doesn't really serve any purpose in the contest but it might weaken the Coalition and threaten some spren to join Odium in his upcoming war for Cosmere. They also might want to strike and conquer some strategic positions, like Azimir, to basically sever Coalition's communications and make them dependent on Odium in the future or something like this. But I agree, it's weird, I don't know what to think of this test and I doubt it's just to test if Anti-Light really exists and if they succeeded in making it in absence of Raboniel.

Reading spoiiers: Agreed, not fully with point 1. The contest still might happen early, because Odium can't stop his troops and Fused to lay down their weapons. He agreed to enforce the peace, but earlier he said he can't expect them to follow him. That means if Dalinar wins the contest in the classical way, Odium will retreat but his troops might refuse to accept the peace, go rogue, thus the remaining book might deal with Dalinar trying to force them to accept the peace treaty - unlikely but that's still a possibility. RoW ch 112: TSM spoilers:

The fact that Dalinar is the best fighter on Roshar and trying to win with him in a swordfight is just stupid.

True, it's smart to have one, but relying too much on something you're familiar with, makes you blind to possibilities offered by something more powerful that you have but don't know yet. Even Dalinar said "it won't be a swordfight," he knows just having a Shardblade won't be enough, RoW ch 116: Even if in 10 days he mentally prepares himself to instinctively use his powers first, not his Shardblade, it would give him a big advantage in the fight. Dalinar's first impulse when facing an opponent is to open a perpendicularity, which truthfully doesn't do much harm - he tried this when facing Nale, he did this when facing Ishar. That's not enough. This has to change because in the contest this move would simply expose him to a killing blow.

Reading spoilers: Not really, because if the contest's date is early on in the book, there is plenty of time to tie all those loose ends into a meaningful conclusion. You mean Zahel? So what? It doesn't really change anything and it doesn't feel honorable to spill out secrets of someone else. TSM spoilers:

Just because he doesn't know how to use the abilities he has, it doesn't mean that he isn't the weapon, that he isn't dangerous. If you give a peasant a crossbow, even if he never held it before, he has a weapon, he is dangerous, he can kill. Dalinar is like that. He has the weapon (his abilities) but he needs to master it. The Stormfather can still help him, we saw this in RoW when the Stormfather suddenly advised him to touch Nale thus viewing the Oathpact and his past, instead of opening a Perpendicularity. In OB Dalinar with no prior knowledge opened a Perpendicularity and did something more that that with him being Unity. It's restrictive, he doesn't have much time to prepare, but Dalinar wields the most powerful weapon there is on Roshar outside of Dawnshards, he can still use it and kill, just like a peasant with a crossbow can kill a knight with years of experience.

We know how it twisted the people of Threnody - they have a "seed of a Shade" in them, but what about the planet? The only big thing we know of is the Evil itself, but the Evil is some kind of entity, not literally the planet. So yes, this part supports your theory about the Evil being some kind of Splinter of Ambition, but I don't think it's an ordinary Splinter, it's something bigger, Connected to the planet in some way. Unless there is something else going on with the entire planet itself. Still, because of the Evil sudden appearance, I think it's unlikely that it's just a natural Splinter that just gained sentience/form recently (from Silence story point of view). I still think it's likely that Threnodites discovered this undeveloped Splinter, messed with it in some way, changed it and made it the Evil by accident. What's interesting is the description of the Evil in TSM ch 15: He saw manifestations of it (plural) mountain-sized figures (plural again), not just the singular Evil. It's described as a Splinter (possibly corrupted), but not like a Spren of the Stomrfather, but more like Re-Shephir, able to form multiple figures of itself - some kind of Midnight Essence, which is a Cosmere wide phenomenon: I agree, Ambition was probably Splinter in the Scar, which is red, just like Threnodite star and those are the only red stars on the star map and this color is significant. Thousands unlikely, hundreds yes

Few things: It's the core of Canticle that's super dense, not the entire planet. A rock picked up from the surface of Canticle would be of normal density. But, yeah, I know, it's the average value. The rings aren't Saturn-like because Saturn's rings are made out of ice, ice which would melt, vaporize and be blown off by solar winds in the Goldilocks zone of this star. Those rings are rocky rings unless more magic is involved. It's not the sun that's hot, the sun isn't hot enough to melt the surface. It's the transfer of investiture from the sun into the planet's core that melts the surface. The surface acts as an incandescent light bulb, resisting the transfer thus releasing heat and melting. But if you're not between the sun and the planet, then the sun is just "regular hot." TSM ch 30: ch 39: And that's it. Nice explanation of how to get your longitude and latitude.

Arcanum Unbounded said the clash happened in interplanetary space, not on the planet itself. I don't have an English version to quote. Just keep reading the Essay, you're making the same mistake again, it's said literally in the next paragraph!

This topic should be in the Cosmere section. What kind of "hurt" are we talking about? Hurt their feelings? No problem! Beat up their Cognitive manifestation? No problem as proven by SH. Hurt their soul or body? Well here is the hard part, what can he hurt or not? He can't eat meat, so it seems that he can't hurt even animals, not just humans. I would guess it's about being sentient, those that can feel emotions. This means type 1 and 4 are off the table for Hoid to hurt, type 2 are in the gray area, as it depends on how self-aware they are, how much they can feel, type 3 are not sentient, not alive, he can "hurt" them. But it also depends on Hoid's perception. If he believes that they aren't alive and he doesn't hurt them (like if he thinks Lifeless aren't alive and can't feel) he might be able to hurt them. SH spoiler: SH spoiler:

10 days over 4/5 parts is a big stretch. Sure, Brandon can do that, but it's a very short period of time stretched over the entire book. For comparison WoR takes place over around 80 days. I don't think it will happen that late, I think it will happen at the end of part 1 or part 2 at most, and the rest of the book will deal with the consequences of the contest's result. I don't even think the contest will be the end of SA, or that it will be as simple as “Dalinar wins or Odium’s champion wins the fight” - the best loophole for Odium is the make Dalinar break the terms and that's what I think Taravangian is aiming for.

Full Lashing applied on the window, but my mistake, Reverse Lashing on the floor. True.

Sadeas' soldiers didn't care about slaves, they were probably very angry at Kaladin&co because of their "initiative" they'd lost a battle pretty spectacularly.

Kaladin was a slave. A slave is meant to be obedient, not showing any initiative. There was no problem here.

There is no need to hide RoW content in spoiler boxes. It's fine to talk about this openly. Odium was carefully forging his Connection to Kaladin in previous weeks through Moash. Odium needed to break Kaladin mentally for him to give up his pain to Odium like Moash did - that was Odium's goal. Here it kind of failed because of the Pursuer. He triggered Kaladin's response, but Kaladin was barely in control of himself and we don't really know what happened there. Kaladin is certainly influenced by Odium and this point, gold and red eyes are a clear indication of that. But Kaladin instead of giving up his pain to Odium, channeled it towards action, which made him really dangerous. I wouldn't be surprised if Kaladin was subconsciously using this Connection to Odium and drawing power from him directly thus that's why he became so fast. But he didn't use Voidlight to fuel his Surges. He couldn't have done that because he was bound to a Honorspren, not Voidspren, nor Corrupted Spren. Venli can use Voidlight because she has a Voidspren trapped inside her gemstone, but fabrials without Voidspren or Corrupted spren can't use Voidlight. He didn't used the Surge of Gravitation: However he did use something to fuel his Full Lashing, and it didn't look like Stormlight in Venli's opinion. I wouldn't be surprised if that was some kind of corrupted Stormlight or even Warlight (it's black-blue, so it wouldn't glow as strong as Stormlight) but it's possible it was just Voidlight. Or maybe it was raw Odium's investiture? Hard to say what it was.

Not even Ashyn, at least there was no full extinction on Ashyn. There were survivors, those who fled to Roshar and those who stayed and settled in the clouds. But situation on Ashyn was probably comparable to Catacendre. However there was a major Shardworld that was destroyed, so there is at least one place with probably 100% fatalities:

I've never interpreted this: There’s a wob somewhere that says that about 100 million people lived in the Final Empire. So yeah… do the math and 200 000 people survived… as: but as: But the "you" here is general "you", not "you Treamayne do your own math," or something dismissive/sarcastic. So I was really surprised by your "drama color" comment because from my point of view it was out of nowhere.

It's hard to say. In the small, personal interactions he is a good person. He cares for his friends, trusts them without question and supports them even if that means risking his own life. He wants them to be happy. He is a good friend. But on the grand scale? Sure, he orchestrated a plan to bring the Final Empire down, he forged a weapon that killed the Lord Ruler. But was that to make Skaa free or was that his revenge for killing Mare and for their suffering in the Pits? Did he go from one Skaa household to another every night to cheer them up, encourage them and give them hope or was that because this was a part of his second plan, to spark a religion that will last and overthrow the Empire, thus achieving his revenge? Was he killing nobles to encourage change or was that just his personal vendetta? Those questions can be rightfully answered in both directions because Kelsier is a complicated character. I have no doubt that Kelsier cared for Skaa and wanted to improve their lives, but his hatred for TLR, the system and the nobles went beyond reasonable, and was a dangerous obsession that fueled his actions. He had no remorse for Skaa that, to provide for their family, had to sell themselves to the Empire and serve in the garrison and the palace guard. In contrast Vin cared about them, she knew they could be better, she knew what horrible dilemma they were facing and she gave them a chance - one of them later saved her by leading Elend to her, by the end this man saved the world by delivering Kelsier's message to Marsh. Kelsier would have just killed him. This hatred that fueled him was a double-edged sword. It could have been easily used for "evil." And that's dangerous. He got better because of Vin, but did he fully get over his past self? Did he change? I don't know, I don't think so. He sparked another religion, he leads another "crew" with questionable goals and he judges what's right or wrong. In the end I agree with Brandon. I think he is a person who could have become a villain in other circumstances. I don't know if he is on the way to becoming a villain now, but he definitely can become a villain. You've already mentioned Vin's quote from SH, but I still want to put it here because that was a rare moment of Kelsier being fully transparent with himself:

Is the One Ring a magical object to you? Because it's made out of Sauron's soul too. For me it doesn't matter that they are made out of "souls" because that's a magical thing existing in this universe which doesn't exist in ours. How they were made depends only on the way magic works in that world, it's still magic even if it involves using souls as a resource. All of those things are magical to me.

Technically speaking, that's what they did with Nightblood - they forged the sword and then "enchanted" him I disagree that there are no "magical objects" in Cosmere. Cosmere is full of them. By in-world view there is no magic in Cosmere as everything is just physics, but from our point of view everything investiture-related is magic. Every fabrial, Awakened object, medallion or Shardblade is a magical object by this definition. There are no magical objects that have undescribed power or swords that glow blue when Parshendi are closeby - Brandon doesn't deal with vague magics. Cosmere doesn't have traditional magical objects, that's true, but that's because Cosmere isn't a traditional fantasy world. Cosmere is a world where magic is just science.

Which are all incomparable to CS who are souls replaced by investiture, a fossil. Not true. They were very surprised to see a Threnodite CS in the Scadrian system. I quoted this earlier: There is this thing called education. Because Alonoe was worried about Threnodites spreading across Cosmere (important note, others called this foolish, so it wasn't something that all of the Ire agreed on: “Well, well,” the ancient creature said. “My foresight does not seem so foolish now, does it, Captain?"), she took precautions and thus guards learned how to recognize a CS. The Ire are a Cosmere-aware organization, with multiple posts across the whole Cosmere. Shades and Threnody are well known across the entire Cosmere (even Raboniel knew about them and she'd never left Roshar) and that's why members of such an organization would know how to recognise a CS and what Shades are. It's just that simple. A person submerging into the solid stone is pretty obvious evidence for a CS. 350 years after Era 1 takes place, much later, and Nazh didn't have that gun in SH. True, there is this thing, we don't know how it works or how those Shades can be stored there (if those really are fully grown Shades, not something like raw investiture, pieces of Shades, maybe that's a physical manifestation of Shades like Shardblade, or something else - those things from the gun don't stick around, they disappear which isn't very Shade-like). This gun was also able to rust and crumble the gondola, which isn't something that normal Shades were seen doing in the novela. This is the only evidence that Shades (or some form of Threnodite investiture) left the Threnodite system, but clearly not on their own, only as a part of this gun. Once again I urge you to read the WoBs I gave you earlier. It's possible for Shades and Cognitive Shadows in general to leave their system, but this is really difficult and they must know what they're doing to achieve that. Shades on their own obviously won't be able to leave Threnody because they aren't even self-aware, they just wander aimlessly around the Forests of Hell without giving any care to people around them unless they break the Three Simple Rules. They have no reasons or any knowledge of how to leave the planet on their own - someone who is knowledgeable would have to take them out of the system on purpose. The same is for regular CS - they must know how to do that and that's hard to learn as even Kelsier and Heralds with hundreds and thousands of years of experience haven't figured this one yet. Sure, they are CS who did that, the Five Scholars - Returned - but they are the exception which might have something to do with Endowment's investiture and the nature of their Divine Breath - we don't really know what's going on with them. I do agree that Sixteen can be a CS (it explains why he doesn't eat, drink or carry out waste), however I find this unlikely because of the reasons presented above. It's still possible though.

A-electrum doesn't do that. It peers a few seconds into your future, showing you multiple shadows of what you can do, just like Atium does showing you shadows you others. It's not like A-gold. You would need to burn lots of electrum with duralumin to see your distant futures (like Elend did with Atium at the end of HoA). HoA ch 3: AoL Ars Arcanum: WoBs:

Spren aren't Stormlight, they're Honor's raw investiture. Stormlight is gaseous, physical form of Honor's investiture. We don't know how Seons are transported out of Sel, but it's related to reasons why Selish magics work oddly like they do, so I would guess it's because Shardic investiture is in CR not SR where it should be (WoB), thus they're unique among Splinters. Both Aethers and Dawnshards (why would you even mention them???) do not apply here, they predate the Shattering, have a bit different rules and their investiture isn't from Adonalsium (WoB) - Aethers are more like little Shards. Hemalurgic spiks are like people - they contain a fraction of person's soul - people can leave their system with no problems, Aviars aren't heavily invested, they're like people as well. Splinters and CS are vastly different than all others, they are pure investiture in massive quantities, which replaces their soul entirely and ties them to the system the investiture is keyed to. So yes, there is a point in explaining Returned specifically - they are the only CS we know of that are capable of leaving their original system. Either there is something really special with Endowment's investiture (which we know there is) and the nature of Returned (they have Divine Breath unlike other CS), or Vasher and other Five Scholars discovered a complicated way for any CS to leave their system (which we know is very hard but possible) is up to debate. Because the Ire are worried about "the powers of Threnody" and made preemptive moves to prevent them from messing with Ire's plans? That's called being smart and planning in advance. It doesn't mean that Shades can leave Threnody or that they left it in the past. And you have WoB specifically stating it's hard for Shades to leave. What? Because Hoid wanted to get into PR? What's another way of doing that and how is having a CS form Scadrial helpful in getting into PR? Hoid had plans on Scadrial, he wanted to get a Lerasium bead for example. I specifically said "Hoid never said Spanky is a CS." He might have just invested a Scadrian who recently died with a jar of Dor and use him as a boat. I really don't know what you want to achieve by giving examples that have little in common with Cognitive Shadows. It's like comparing a grain of sand to the entire planet. Shards ARE tied to the system they invested in. They can't just leave it and invest in multiple systems at once. Their power however permeates the entire Cosere, it's everywhere, but they can't access that power, nor are they always aware of that power - when they are aware of that power, then they can tweak it. But they are still tied to the system in which they invested. Shards are in a vastly different league compared to CS, they aren't comparable. CS are dead men walking, Shards are literally gods of Cosmere.

This is a little different, Endowment invests with "no strings attached." Additionally Vasher knows how to suppress and control his Divine Breath, which might be helpful. I think this is limited to Returned only due to the nature of Endowment and her investiture, because I can't believe that Heralds, with more than 7000 years of experience, have never figured out how to get out of Roshar - something that Kalak tries to do so badly now, something that Ishar would be able to do with his Bondsmith Unchained powers etc. If it was so easy for every CS to do, Kalak would have done it already (Kel too). ??? That didn't happen. The Ire in SH were worried that powers of Threnody would want to join the bigger Cosmere theater and they made some preparation in advance - the biggest are guards in the Threnody system that the Ire are sure won't allow any Shadows to pass through. Shades can't leave Threnody just like that: SH ch 5-2: It was never said that Spanky is a CS. Hoid called him a spirit and said "it's hard to move around in this subastral,' so it's also likely that Spanky came from Scadrial and never left it. All? We only know that Returned can leave Nalthis via unknown means. It's the same investiture permeating their soul, the same source - Preservation. They should be tied to Scadrial just like Kelsier. It's possible for them to worldhop, but they need to know how to do it, and for know we've seen only Returned doing that: And how would Sixteen get his body back? I admit, him being a CS would explain why he doesn't eat or drink etc, but there are some problems to resolve to make this work. In my opinion it's possible but unlikely. It's more likely that he's an A-cadmium/F-bendalloy Twinborn.

SA: