cultivationspren

1. Either Adolin will be killed or will be saved at the last minute by Renarin. Kal will comfort Shallan if Adolin dies, leading to them getting together. 2. Amaram will become a high prince, replacing Sadeas, and may end up as a radiant. 3. Jasnah becomes a worldhopper. 4. We find out who Hoid is writing to in the letter, and who he is hiding from that he says he came to Scandrial to find. 5. Vasher finds out that Szeth has nightblood.

I don't think villain, but Shallan's association with the ghostbloods and Pattern's insistence that Shallan will kill him hints that she is going to struggle with her morality. I think, on the other hand, there may be some villains going the other way, similar to Darkness. Amaram is actually someone who I think could turn good, which I suppose could cause Kal to turn on Dalinar. Szeth is another. Amaram being evil isn't necessary for the future - not with Taravangian and Iyatil there and Roion's family having been humiliated by Adolin.

Well, if the topic of conversation is the Herald's shardblades, they are special because they are Honor blades. I don't know that they even require a spren, as the assassin in white carried an honor blade, which if I remember correctly doesn't scream when Kalladin holds it. The honor blades seem to all be in Shinovar (except the assassin's, which he took with him, and Talenel's because died before he could give his up. One interesting thing is that the blade that Dalinar bonded to him (presumably Talenel's shardblade) may not have been the honor blade, as two separate descriptions of that blade describe very different objects. It is possible that Dalinar's blade was a dead spren shardblade, and that Talenel still has his honor blade. Anyway, the difference may come from the fact that though they broke the Oathpact, their swords were special and therefore they may not follow the same rules.

I think Bluefingers is a possible candidate for someone with a Hemalurgic spike. He seems bent towards ruining both the kingdoms of Halladren and Idris and is willing to use lifeless to do so. But his motivation doesn't match his methods, which are extreme. Another possibility in my mind would be someone from Sel, maybe Iadon or Dilaf. Both of them are nuts, and again seem to propogate ruin for motives that are weak or misguided.

I take a slightly different view of her boon and curse. The idea that the nightwatcher may be Cultivation herself leads me to think that Lift's request not to change has actually been granted as her curse. She is probably growing somewhat, but the idea of never changing - not only to most people, but to the actual god of growing things would probably be looked at as a pretty negative thing. The other things that she has been given - the ability to convert food into stormlight and the ability to touch spren both seem far more like boons than curses, but she didn't ask for those things and I am curious as to how those two attributes could possibly be construed as negative. Her ability to generate her own stormlight, for example, is the only thing that saved her in WOR when darkness was going to kill her.

I think that the most interesting potential meaning of this idea is to unite the heralds. The heralds broke apart after the last desolation, and each has been following their own path since. The only way to defeat the desolation will be to unite not only the radiants, but the heralds. This is somewhat alluded to in Edgedancer, but in WOR as well. The Heralds, like the knights radiant are broken people. They are all special in that they have unique gifts or abilities, but alone they are either destructive or misguided - Jezrian is jaded, Nale is narrow-minded, Talenel has been driven crazy (with the other heralds knowing that his penchant for self-sacrifice may single-handedly prevent the desolations, Ash goes around destroying art, and Ishar seems bent on using Nale to kill off surge binders in a misguided attempt to disrupt the desolation. Normally, Ishar would be the person who keeps the Heralds pointed in the right direction, the recreance has changed things. By breaking their oaths, they have become lost. Since Honor is dead, he is unable to unite the Heralds, and Cultivation seems to be MIA. In addition, cultivation seems scholarly to the point that, like Wyndle, she may be more interesting in create a garden of fancy chairs than uniting the Heralds against the desolation.