aemetha

I think this makes more sense if you look at each of the radiants from the ten in the battle (with one exception, see below) in turn. Kaladin - Windrunner. As noted already the windrunners have a lot of squires. Additionally, Kaladin is a captain in an army in which slightly more than 110% of the members really, really want to be windrunners. His pool of potential candidates is massive. Shallan - Lightweaver. Doesn't really have a large pool of people to choose from, but she is training pretty much the entire pool of people she has to choose from. Dalinar - Bondsmith. It's not unusual for there to only be one bondsmith, and there are a maximum of three. Not really something to be concerned about. Nale (not Szeth because Nale clearly has this leadership role) - Skybreakers. Nale is actively recruiting and training radiants, and has done so for millennia. Lift - Edgedancers. She's only ten, which in our terms is eleven (though admittedly has been ten for three years now). She also doesn't use the most basic mechanic of surgebinding - accessing stormlight - in a manner that anyone else could do. On top of that, she has an entire empire at her disposal. She's also very busy, Dalinar's lunch isn't going to steal itself. Probably best that Lift doesn't try to train people at this point. Taln - Stonewards. Well, he's been catatonic most of the time, which no doubt has impeded his ability to recruit new radiants. Ash - Dustbringers (presumed). Hasn't actually decided to fight yet. Malata is also a dustbringer, but she's on the other team and we haven't seen what they are doing. Renarin - Truthwatchers. Has a lot of issues with training people. He has difficulty with social interactions, and is probably not likely to attract a huge following from the people around him. We don't see him associate with anyone outside his family and bridge 4 (who are all windrunner squires). Also has a corrupted spren, meaning what a trainee learns is probably different to what he does. Jasnah - Elsecallers. Hates taking on wards. By her own admission is bad at it. Probably will have to do something like this, but finding time between being queen, world leading scholar and mentor to Shallan is going to be very limiting for her. I don't imagine this order expanding very rapidly. Venli - Willshapers (presumed). Hasn't had any opportunity to advance oaths or take on trainees.

His own thoughts on his website tend to indicate otherwise. http://faq.brandonsanderson.com/node/252 http://faq.brandonsanderson.com/node/253 He seems to be saying he's okay with depicting things he personally doesn't feel right about, as long as he shows the consequences of those depictions so as not to glorify it.

This is not confirmed at all. This is entirely supposition, which may or may not be correct. It is in part the assumption that this is true that made me want to post my devils advocacy.

Again, not being an apologist for things that are objectively wrong from a position as an impartial observer, but this behaviour has mirrors in real life in which there is far from agreement on the immorality of it. Take for example white middle class workers in the US who object to taxes being spent on equal opportunity initiatives on the basis that they worked hard for their money, and disadvantaged minorities have the same opportunity to work hard for their money. The argument that they worked hard is true, but it misses the point. The white middle class have opportunity to earn more than disadvantaged minorities because they have to work less hard to get to a position where working hard earns them a good income - they begin from a position of more opportunity through better access to education, and less obstacles to success. Is it immoral for them to object to paying more taxes though on this basis, particularly when many of them have no real idea of the barriers faced by disadvantaged minorities? Same situation with Laral. She has no idea that life is so hard for the darkeyed, or that she is particularly privileged. How could she? The argument that she is an immoral person for behaving in the way she has been taught to behave is tenuous at best. She has little life experience to make the judgement objectively. It might be more accurate to describe her as lacking imagination for not foreseeing a better way to administer things. Does a lack of imagination now constitute immorality? The relative good and evil of the darkeyes isn't really a factor as much as the relative positions of those involved in the interaction. Laral isn't malicious. She does what she is supposed to do. She has been trained to have an attitude of superiority to the darkeyes in exactly the same way as the darkeyes are trained to be subservient to the lighteyes. Out POV characters stand out because they are differentiated from the norm. Nobody wants to read a book about people who just said "Okay" and carried on about their business. It's the changing of the status quo that makes them interesting players in the setting. It's probably not accurate to label those who don't step outside the norm immoral though, at least not until such a time as the dynamic shifts the norm.

Well, lesser spren haven't demonstrated any ability to communicate in that way. The don't make sounds (perceived or otherwise), ergo they can't scream. I imagined that communication with the lesser spren is some kind of advanced intuition. I'm still not discounting your theory though. I'm more of the opinion we need more information to justifiably hop off the fence. I'm leaning toward the lesser spren slightly.

It's confirmed.

This would seem to support the premise I suggested though...

If the lesser spren are connected to the higher spren, and the higher spren to the radiant, does this not circumvent the problem? In many respects they would all be seen as the same entity.

Okay, so here's the thing. You take starving people in a refugee crisis, and a few get depression as a result of it. Then you get African Americans in the us subjected to verbal taunts and other forms of non-violent racial discrimination, and a few get depression. Then you take holocaust survivors, and a few get depression. The rate of depression varies, but not by a huge amount. So, why do you have circumstances that are objectively far better than other circumstances resulting in the same trauma response in similar numbers? It's perspective. African Americans subjected to racism get depression in similar numbers to refugees and holocaust survivors because it matters less what the actual trauma is and more that there is a perception of disadvantage and things not working out for you by comparison to the immediate zone of influence. So, from Laral's perspective, she wasn't especially cruel to Kaladin and his family. If she looks at what her peers do (other lighteyed rulers) she isn't behaving inconsistently with them. So from her perspective, she isn't being cruel, she's behaving normally. Now a darkeyed Knight Radiant flying into your house and stabbing the floor with a shardblade - that's not normal. So to Laral's mind she is entitled to be angry at her floor being stabbed, and Kaladin isn't entitled to be angry at all. Now, I'm not being an apologist for what are clearly immoral actions, I am only seeking to explain how perspective alters the interpretation of events in circumstances like this.

To be fair, if someone walked into my house and stabbed the floor with a super powerful sword, I'd also be very irritated about them damaging the floor.

Correlation is not a synonym causation. If they had found the cryptic they would certainly have killed it as a radiant spren, but that doesn't mean it was what they were actually looking for.

It is not my responsibility to end Rayse. It is my hubris.

I don't think so. I think it needs to be the truth of a lie told to oneself. It seems to be the theme of cryptics that they seek truth by understanding the difference between truth and a lie. The lie gives the truth meaning.

I do think the diagram could be a subterfuge. I'm not sure that Odium is the primary target of the subterfuge though. As Taravangian gets smarter, he loses his empathy and compassion. We've seen scenes where he orders peoples death for the most minor of slights. Now, consider when he wrote the diagram he was an order of magnitude more intelligent than even his smartest other days. If he was in such a state, I could foresee a situation where he literally stopped caring about the people of Roshar altogether, and decided the goal was worthless. So he wrote a diagram to make himself think it was a means to the stated end, but is in fact a path to a selfish acquisition of power for himself at the expense of the people of Roshar. /end devils advocacy

Yeah, what does beta the SPaG mean though?

I don't even know what those things are .

Storms thought Ado. This was not going well. In only a few short months since they took possession, Urithiru had become the murder capital of Roshar. Even chasing away the unmade hadn't prevented this latest outbreak of violence. Three nights it had gone on now. Brutal violence. Darkeyes no doubt, the wounds were inflicted with blunt weapons, a lighteyes would have used a sword. Blunt or sharp though, it hadn't prevented the assailant from hitting his victims hard enough to spill a lot of blood. Ado bent down to examine the closest corpse. Same as the others. Not a single clue as to the identity of the assailant. Wait. What was that? As he watched the man exhaled softly, almost imperceptibly. For the last time. Storms! If he only just died, with that wound the assailant must be close. Very close! There was only one way out of this maze of alleys, and Ado hadn't passed anyone as he had moved in the opposite direction to the flow of panicked residents. Whoever had done this, they were close... and trapped. Ado carefully drew his sword and glanced around. Ado was a tenner, he rarely had opportunity to celebrate the fluke of birth that made him a lighteyes, no, Ado worked for a living. Still, on this night Ado was grateful for the length of sharpened steel his status afforded him. Against an unarmoured foe armed with a blunt weapon his sword was an edge he would likely need before this night was out. There, the alley at the back. It's the only place with enough concealment to hide the assailant. Ado cautiously approached, careful to take a wide berth around any corners that might be used to ambush him. He reached the entrance of the alley, but the dead end in the distance was shrouded in darkness. "I know you're in there. Throw down your weapon and come out with your hands where I can see them." he called. "Busy! You come down here instead." came the upbeat reply from the alley. The closeness of the buildings and the way the night air carried the sound made it impossible to pinpoint where the voice had come from. Should have known not to hope this would go down smoothly thought Ado. "Look, I'm not walking down a dark alley chasing a murderer." he called, "Either you come out and surrender to me now, or I'm quite happy to wait for the rest of my squad to arrive and we'll fill that alley so full of crossbow bolts you'll need a windrunner to stick your body back together for the funeral". "Okay" the reply came. "Okay what?" asked Ado. "You're coming out? No sudden movements!". "No, okay to the other thing. With the crossbows." said the voice. Storms, storms, storms. Ado had been bluffing. He'd been patrolling alone, his squad had no idea where he was. "Look, enough people have died tonight. What's it going to take to get you to surrender to my custody?" he asked the formless darkness at the back of the alley. "Well. Do you think you could come down here and answer a question for me?" came the reply. "And then you'll surrender to my custody?" asked Ado. "Yes, I think that would be okay." the voice replied. Ado glanced back of his shoulder. Help would not be arriving, and if he walked away, tomorrows murders would forever be on his conscience. The choice was no choice at all. He slowly moved into the alley, allowing his eyes to adjust to the darkness with each step. Halfway into the alley he began to make out shapes, and a little further down he was able to make out yet another corpse in the depths of the alley. Turns out he'd been wrong, the assailant had used a sword, they just didn't bother to take it out of the sheathe. Standing hilt outward from the gaping wound in the chest of the corpse was a sword, a shardblade in fact. Ado still couldn't make out the assailant though, where was he? "What's the question?" he called. The voice replied in his head, "Would you like to destroy some evil today?".

I'm sceptical. If this is the way shardplate is formed, what is the role of lesser spren? And what are the ramifications of Syl's musing about children? I'm not convinced of any theory yet though so I'm willing to throw an upvote each way.

Right, and the radiant spren are confirmed to be splinters of both Honor and Cultivation. Being a splinter of Odium is not necessarily mutually exclusive with being a splinter of Honor and/or Cultivation. It is in fact a necessity for my theory to work.

I enjoyed all the avalanches. There is one I enjoyed more than all the others though.

This WoB is a little less ambiguous. He's referred to them as spren more than once. I'm not saying it's an absolute certainty, hence why I say it requires some semantic shenanigans to come from off world. I certainly don't discount the possibility of semantic shenanigans. https://wob.coppermind.net/events/223-words-of-radiance-seattle-signing/#e6234

Maybe there was some risk involved in that. Spren find it hard to travel off world, which might be seen as some kind of pull toward their native worlds. If you added that force to the spren's own desire to escape its confinement, perhaps there was a risk of them escaping? I'm just spitballing though, so don't take that as anything more.

They fought in the threnody system, but the actual splintering took place elsewhere. According to Khriss. This would require some semantic shenanigans. It is confirmed that the unmade are spren, and that the term spren is unique to Roshar, though there are similar, arising from the same basic rules but developing in different directions, entities on other worlds such as the Seons of Sel. https://wob.coppermind.net/events/91-general-twitter-2015/#e819 https://wob.coppermind.net/events/91-general-twitter-2015/#e817

There is a scene at one point where Kaladin is talking to Syl about whether spren can have children, in which she refers to the windspren. I would think it's possible that this is foreshadowing for a situation whereby a Radiant bonds a greater radiant spren, granting it greater ability in the physical realm, and the greater radiant spren upon reaching a certain level of ability in the physical realm is able to bond the lesser radiant spren, granting them abilities in the physical realm. If this were the case, then there's a plausible scenario that the death of the greater radiant spren would have a flow on effect to the lesser radiant spren without a need for the lesser radiant spren to have sapience in the same way as the greater radiant spren.

Greater cosmere spoilers