Aminar

Yep. And I suspect they'll get fed up with the Fused body-snatching them pretty quickly once the reality is figured out en masse. But we run into the problem we saw with Eshonai. The forms of power seem to invalidate choice on some level. They truly change the Singers into a different person. Eshonai would have fought her way out of that eventually from what the Fused and that Spren said. But it's hard to say how that will resolve.

Nah. Taravangian is the lynch pin, but he doesn't understand how. He thinks it's the intelligence. But it's the stupid days where his empathy is highest that will matter in the end. (I think he's being groomed to hold the Passion Shard.) (All 3 of the Nightwatcher's tools are important. Lift and Dalinar will also be key to the final conflict.)

Smarter with what we know. Not necessarily smarter with what they were told. They didn't learn it was even possible until the final desolation and good people don't usually experiment with the fate of a planet's population on the line. Beyond that, we're not going to see the story end in justified genocide. A large portion of the point and tone is that genocidal wars aren't the answer. So of course there will be a deal with the singers. Odium and the Fused are the problem. The fused need to be given their rest. They've been destroyed by immortality as much as the heralds have, but were more hostile to begin with(likely due to Odium's influence on their minds). I would guess they'll end up released by whoever takes up Passion after Rayse is dealt with,or that by sending him away his influence will wain and he'll become a more cosmere-wide problem again.

They were warned it could have disastrous consequences. I suspect the Everstorm was that consequence. And there was a level of pain sharing that somehow mitigated the torture. The Stormfather mentions this in OathBringer. The Everstorm is described as pent up energy, energy that had been building. Likely because no forms of power or Fused were running around using said power. I suspect it could have been fashioned long before it was, but the destruction of the Singer intelligence forestalled it for a long long time. But now that it's here, the Everstorm has invalidated the Oathpact, forcing a final conflict with a semi-neverending army of fused.

There's some major differences in someone's self perception involved. Let's look at 4 potential categories. A: Someone with poor vision. B: Someone with poor vision who uses corrective lenses. C: Someone who became blind at an earlier point int heir life and has lived that way. D: Someone who was born blind. 3 of these people are highly unlikely to have their vision change from stormlight. A, C, & D. Person B lives most of their life seeing as if they didn't have an impairment. So that's there self image. Person C might regain their vision. Persons A and D are highly unlikely to change. Lopen regained his arm because of something called Phantom Limb syndrome. A lot of people who lose a limb never fully accept the loss in the subconscious. They'll feel it long after it's gone. And Lopen is a little goofy in general where his self image is concerned. Point being, Renarin experienced life as if he had good vision, so his self image was as someone who could see. When he had his glasses off he didn't feel like himself. Much like how my wife will panic without her glasses.

My understanding is very very slowly disintegrating, but it's not really clear.

That seems wrong. Where's the 3 or 4 storms constantly circling from? They seem to cover the whole continent in less than a day and Roshar is the only major continent. With them hitting every few days it doesn't make sense to have multiple storms(barring the addition of the Everstorm). The continent looks to be in the Southern Hemisphere. And looks to be at least a third of the planet's horizontal circumference.

I think generally speaking they naturally just give in when it's time, given what we've seen. Especially given how vital a resource the Soulcasters are, I imagine they're otherwise given a pretty easy life with a lot of bonuses.

Even the cheek isn't as vital as say, into her lung. It's a really survivable loss, just annoying and discomforting.

In OathBringer they're looking for a perpendicularity when trapped in Shadesmar. They see the storm, but it doesn't manifest in a way that let's them travel the realms like a perpendicularity would. It's just lights in the sky. Storms don't act like other perpendicularities we've seen at all. And they're older than the shattering of Adonalsium. Yet even before Honor rode the winds the storms were assumedly dropping off stormlight.

I don't think they're constantly invested(as that would leave them resistant to lashings and shardblades) but the way I imagine it using a Soulcaster would likely reopen the bleeding. But I do wonder how the whole survival with holes in the body works. I would assume they've got an ongoing connection with the Cognitive Realm given the way its all described, but that doesn't cover everything. They do still have to eat and breathe from what we've seen and the damage does seem to be in superfluous areas.

It doesn't seem to manifest that way in the Cognitive Realm. And we know Dalinar opened it at the end of OathBringer without causing a storm and to Odium's surprise. His comment was something like, "No, I killed you."

I don't think we have enough information yet, but I'd guess next book we'll learn more.

I'm curious about Horneater White. I know Brandon's not a drinker so I assume he is either outsourcing that writing or just making it up, but it sounds nothing like Everclear shots so, as someone with a love for overpowering flavors, I'm intrigued by the idea. (My family enjoys downing unsweetened Kool-Aid packets as a snack. I have learned this is extremely not normal and that to most people lemons and limes are unbearably sour, not a great slightly sour snack with a frustrating peeling process.)

I would assume it would clot rather quickly. They'd just have constantly scabbed over holes that would occasionally open up and "bleed".

Passion was a direct reference to Odium's influence. I should have been clear rather than going for the joke. Odium seems to like conflict. So most likely he used her as an example of behavior they should fear out of the human refugees the Singers took in, inciting a war using the age old tactics of fearmongering and xenophobia while using his Shard's nature to massively amplify those emotions. It doesn't take a lot of looking to see horrible things done to and because of children because of those emotions without a god's influence.

I suppose we can also look at it as the bodies created match up to how they were when they died. Unless we think they reform with whatever haircut etc they had right when the oathpact was sworn. It's largely immaterial. I don't think Shallash is like, re-experiencing late puberty with every desolation or anything. I just think the immortality she has wouldn't stop developmental stuff, only aging stuff. It keeps things consistent without getting into too many weird issues with age and relationships that would feel off in Stormlight. At least given the fact Cosmere courting is, from what we've seen, largely more in line with our modern sensibilities than say, Game of Thrones.

No. I'm saying that she looks to be in her 20s because physically that's when maturing largely stops but that she became a herald in her late teens so that her father could also be on his 30s without some really young paternity going on. Like, she was 17 or 18 when the Oathpact was sworn while her father was between 34 and 36. I don't think she gets a new body when she dies or anything. Just gets healed and teleported off to Damnation. And that creates a very narrow window for the war that started the Desolations to happen in and a narrow window for it to start. Like, if she was born year 0 the war probably started in year 7 to 9 and the Oathpact was sworn within a decade of that to end the war. It just strikes me as a really tight timeline. Even if the Oathpact did happen in her twenties it's a really tight timeline for a war that lasts thousands of years to start. And I should add that we know their bodies don't completely freeze biological processes because they still have hair growth going on so it makes sense that other hormonal processes would continue.

He's talking in general while Ash could very easily be an exception he isn't willing to go into to avoid spoiling things and to save time. We know her father appears to be in his 30s and she looks to be in her early 20s. A big part of the female body change between the teens and 20s is a hormone reaction. That isn't aging. Her cell copying can be perfect so she doesn't wrinkle or or age in the way we picture aging, while her figure can fill out due to hormones. In addition her brain development likely didn't freeze if she was made a herald before it finished in her mid 20s.

Reason and Passion don't always get along. Hence blaming Odium.

Folktales generally have a root in truth. How it worked was probably different than the telling we saw, but it makes sense to have Shallash as the youngest of the Heralds and the only living character who could have been a child at the time, a character we'll almost certainly get flashbacks from later, be that girl. From there she was a child. She cannot be responsible for the war that followed, but her defining attribute at the moment is shame. The story arc tracks. Her later actions and guilt over what she caused would make perfect sense as to why she would take on the Oathpact. Trying to make up for the horror she feels guilty about. Being made a Herald was not a gift. It was a burden people who wanted to make the world better took on. The defining attribute of those people was one no selfish person would have. Willingness to endure eternal torture to keep others safe. Undoubtably Odium is the truly responsible party. The parallels with the garden of Eden are pretty strong.

I've detailed before how Ash's age doesn't mean much. Heralds are immortal, not frozen. That means they don't age but it doesn't mean their bodies won't continue the natural growth progression of the human body, which happens to stop at around 25. Assuming we don't want any parents in their teens running around because of modern sensibilities, We have Jezrian becoming a dad at about 18 and Ash becoming a Herald when she's 18 and her Dad is 36ish. But I more meant that assuming she was 7 or 8 when the barrier was broken There's not a lot of time in there for Jezrian to be super leaderly and wise and the whole war thing to happen. It gets to be a very very compressed timeline. Unless we don't think Ash was the girl who looked up, and that seems very unlikely to me.

Potentially. Brandon said he wasn't sure but thought she wasn't. And I doubt she was in her 30s when she was made a radiant if her father also was. It's more likely their age gap is 17-20 years.

The Singers predate the breaking of Adonalsium so its quite possible that Honor and Cultivation were a little biased in the favor of people that looked more like them. But I suspect it has less to do with them abandoning anyone and more to do with Odium abandoning the humans. The way it seems to me, we had a planet run by Odium. They used a Passion based surge-binding system that ended up rendering the planet uninhabitable. Humans then fled to Roshar. Some kind of deal was struck giving them Shinovar. Odium drove them to conquest. A form of peace was eventually arranged between Humans and Singers. Odium was unhappy with this and switched sides to keep the war going, feeding the anger and rage of the Singer Leadership, and creating the fused. The war raged longer, and the oathpact was made to prevent Roshar from being rendered uninhabitable. Noting that all of this must have taken less than 10 years given that the Heralds were alive when the crossing was made and that they look the age they were when they became heralds. Which still strikes me as less than believable the way the events have been depicted so far with The Girl who Looked Up.

That was a thing for a long time. Families would just have a cauldron of everything and leftovers stew going so that nothing was wasted.