Vortaan

Here's the thing though: we know that all the Cryptics currently bonded to Radiants died at the Recreance. So... a whole bunch of people decided to lie to themselves, and it coincidently lined up with a whole bunch of Windrunners betraying their oaths and killing their spren? Unless the speculation is that every Radiant betrayed the first oath, which opens up a whole different line of speculation...

... Why hasn't anyone mentioned the simplest reason Kaladin may never hear from his parents: Roshone is intercepting the letters and destroying them. For the amount of power he has in Hearthstone, this seems pretty simple to accomplish. I wouldn't be surprised if Roshone also destroyed the letter telling them about Tien.

The only thing is... the Listeners have orange blood, and most Rosharan fauna seems to have purple blood. That indicates a different origin to me. Also, if I were Cultivation making a sentient species to exist on Roshar, I would certainly mimic the local life forms in order for them to be more successful.

I don't see how that'd be possible though. The dead spren cease to exist as individuals. It seems like Syl was only able to be reformed because of a lingering connection to Kaladin. I take the screaming from the Shardblades to be the screaming of the collective force that the spren in question represent, more than any individual spren.

Whether the highprinces are in favor or not, the fact is that the spren are at the very least uncomfortable around Shardblades. People using them are a constant reminder of the failure of humans to the KR. I can't help but feel that if everyone gave up their Blades, that might be a big enough show of trust to the spren that more would make the crossover from Shadesmar.

I'm more inclined to think that the Unmade are literally humans unmade into monsters, kind of a reverse Hemalurgy. We know Rayse/Odium can break apart Shards, and hatred is pretty destructive to people who actively engage it. I wonder what Odium could do with a human's Spiritweb if they were devoted to him? Tear away everything human and turn them into something not quite spren, but certainly no longer human?

See, I'm taking that another way and assuming that the Unmade are Odium's version of Heralds, people torn apart until just the qualities he wanted in them are left.

I think it's a jump to assume that Wyndle is just a cultivationspren. He's likely a mixture spren, which is why he allows access to Honor's magic system and cares about oaths/honor. Otherwise his bonding to a Radiant doesn't make much sense. I'll also wager that true cultivation spren are less sapient than other spren, similar to windspren or flamespren. That might be another reason that spren in general prefer humans is that they can gain sapience in the Physical realm from them, where they can't with Listeners.

I don't know how much we can trust Hoid here. He has some kind of grudge against Rayse, and is apparently so driven by it that he's spent at least 4 millenia trying to figure out how to kill him.

I wonder though. Dalinar is bonded to the Stormfather. I doubt he'll be very accepting of Shardblades, which might influence Dalinar's take on them. Also, Plate might still be part of the Nahel bond, we're only three Oaths in, remember.

The primary difference between Nightblood and Shardblades though is that we see Nightblood working as a sword first and a weapon of supernatural qualities second. He's a sword. He cuts people, he can be used to break bones, etc... when we actually see his true power, it's amazing and fantastic... but it still does physical-type stuff. He's not just burning out eyes or crippling limbs, he's turning people and walls to smoke. I wonder if this isn't the degree of magnitude between the two, in that Nightblood is primarily a Physical object with a strong Cognitive/Spiritual presence, whereas a Shardblade is a Congitive object with a strong Physical presence. I wonder which would be more powerful in Shadesmar?

So now we know what Shardblades (and maybe Plate too), actually are. You can take this one of two ways, as the Blade is the physical representation of the Oaths a Radiant takes, or the Blade is the actual body of a spren.... which raises an interesting debate for our heroes. They know the Blades that they've traditionally used are effectively corpses, whether of promises or spren it doesn't really matter. The symbolism behind those Blades is terrible, and using them is likely to anger any spren that cross over from Shadesmar. So... do the new KR allow Shardbearers to join their fight? Or do they insist that these people give up very powerful weapons in the name of Honor?

I'll wager all of the Sixteen had a hand in it. The question would be why. There's also the reference that Rayse -wanted- to be Odium... was he perhaps some kind of religious zealot before, akin to Dilaf?

Well, Kelsier's got to do -something- while he's hanging around Shadesmar...

I had a similar thought, as though the religion of the One was maybe leftover knowledge of Adonalsium. It also reminded me of Shu-Kessig, and for some reason the God Beyond.

Probably because they were designed that way? If my theory that they are Cultivation's creations is correct, then it would make complete sense for spren and Parshendi to have been designed with a symbiotic relationship in mind. In fact, one of the epigraphs kind of hints at that, with the spren turning their backs on the Listeners for humans, probably because humans could achieve the sets of mind needed to attract a wide variety of spren much easier than Listeners could due to the nature of their symbiosis.

Well at this point I think we can confirm Bridge Four as... maybe proto-squires? I'd be interested to see how exactly their abilities work. Do they get full Surgebinding abilities, only somewhat more limited, or do they just get the enhanced speed/skill/etc of Stormlight? Honestly the second seems much more useful to me as you don't necessarily need a ton of mage/fighter/tanks, but you definitely will need people to keep them alive.

I believe you are wrong. The spren are the natural outlet for Shardic power on Roshar, it seems. While each spren is a tiny splinter of one of the three Shards invested on Roshar, only of those Shardholders is dead. Cultivation and Odium are still alive and we have confirmation of Cultivation-spren and Odium-spren, so it's pretty likely that spren just occur when a Shard invests on Roshar, much like any Shard investing on Scadrial will probably start creating a god metal or mists (probably both?)

But dual-wielding a Radiant-type blade that can change form, has no ten heartbeat cooldown, and an Honorblade sounds like it has potential, particularly if that person also has Plate. Honestly I can see Edgedancers being ridiculous with this.

Cause and effect is backwards, though. The spren sense a Desolation, so they start coming over to help mankind. Whether Darkness kills Surgebinders or not, Odium is coming, and all he's really doing is limiting those who could fight back. To use an example from another series, it's like gentling men who can channel in WoT. Come the Last Battle, you're going to need every superpower you can get, so cutting off half of them from their power seems... ill advised.

Skybreakers going into deep cover to prevent further Desolations. I think the Recreance occurred because the Radiants learned that the Heralds lied to them. Nine orders saw their gods lying to them as perhaps the final straw, since instead of heroes fighting to save the world they had become more of a police force, and an increasingly ineffective one. The Skybreakers, however, took this knowledge and went underground, holding to their commitment to prevent Desolations in the only way they could figure: eliminating Surgebinders in the mistaken belief that a surge in Surgebinders was the cause of a Desolation, instead of the other way around. Once Nalan returns to lead them, they become much more effective. The question is rather was Nalan worldhopping in the interim, or was he biding his time, waiting for the stresses on the Radiants to break them apart so he could claim his order and still try to uphold the Oathpact without actually upholding it? Drawing a parallel to Szeth, I wonder if he is holding to his commitment in a way that definitely harms the world, and is in some way justifying it by holding to the literal oath, rather than the spirit of it.

Well, Restares might not be working with any of those other 6. EDIT: Also Stone Shamans, maybe?

He pretty much straight out says it. Dalinar is trying to unite Alethkar, whereas Sadeas is pretty much allowing the status quo. Alethkar without a really strong central government would be very easy to topple, whereas Dalinar could possibly build it into something very hard to take over without a lot of infrastructure damage.

I'll bet you can't actually Lash different parts of the body in different direction because they associate themselves Cognitively as part of one body. I can't see Szeth not using that at some point, and he didn't. I also think a single Lashing upward works better nine times out of ten. Less Stormlight, just as deadly.

Oathblades and Brokenblades?