Darvys

I suppose in his mind, it was better to cook chull droppings for the man who killed half his family than to fight for him, or worse try to kill him and end up dead while he has a family waiting back home (probably wasn't too smart to feed him dung in this scenario but well, it's Rock). That aside, i don't think Rock will want to keep the shards right now, if they remind Kaladin of the men he failed to protect, they would remind him of the promise (?) he failed to keep. And it just feels weird for a member of Bridge 4 to wield shards other than their bonded spren, let Moash be the only one to walk that path. And if Rock is going to be king, much better for it to come after his growth as a Radiant than as a result of killing Amaram, let that bastard have no impact whatsoever on helping mankind survive.

Pff, limited imagination, i can already see Maya swinging her Adolinblade at fused and voidspren in Shadesmar.

@Subvisual Haze Yeah, she only spared a moment to tell herself not to think about his state of mind, sure they were in a dire spot, but to not think of it even when they were safe ?. She's so used to repressing her own feelings she has no clue how to begin to handle someone else's, and then she shuts down the moment he akwardly mentions how he'd like to be able to emulate her in "coping" with it all ... At times like this i'm reminded that she's just a kid, and in a way, it's for the best she ended up with Adolin, as neither of them has a clue what they want or should expect from a relationship, hopefully the trainwreck that is their marriage will be a good learning experience.

What do you do when your judiciary system lets murderers go free ? When thousands of men die and the one responsible admits he isn't done ? Let him do as he pleases as you begin a discourse hoping to change your society ? Would you have been more confortable if they had gone to war against Sadeas, resulting only in more innocent deaths ? It's easy for us to pat ourselves on the back with our lofty morality because we assume we live in just socities. There's a reason there a multiple orders of knights, Kaladin has a tendency to claim the moral high ground without offering an alternative solution, as evidenced by his exchange with Jasnah (i'm not defending Jasnah's suggestion here).

It was a submarine all along, it'll emerge again when the time is right. Still, there's too many oddities with how the plot was handled to assume this is the end, the point isn't whether she ends up with Kal or not, some of us here are happy that he got away from the mess that is Shallan currently, the point is that we're not buying that Shallan has reached some semblance of ballance in the end of OB and we believe that her marriage is bound to fail or at least hit multiple walls before this is through. We'd be ok with the two of them being happy together, but only if the issues preventing that were addressed and not just magically erased.

There's something else about Maya, i don't know if i'm reading too much into the line, but does the blade now glow as well ? "Maya dropped into his hand. Though he was covered in dust, she still shone bright." Was the sun hidden by the storm at this point ? If not, it could be reflection, don't know.

The ideals are different, as long as your spren (Stormfather in case of Windrunners for whatever reason) deems that you are starting to live by them, you only need to say the words and they'll be accepted. You don't need to be in a specific mood to do that, note that Lopen tried to swear the oath previously in an epic setting but it wasn't accepted as according to the Stormfather he wasn't "quite ready". All this talk about Adolin not being broken enough seems silly to me, old generations of Radiants numbered what ? a couple thousands ? What kind of horrors do you think they could have gone through living in the silver kingdoms under Honor's guidance ? Knowing that the surges in recruitement happened before the desolations, so the wars themselves weren't the trigger.

It may seem like mad raving from afar, but we have no idea what he's like in person, he did manage to get a nation to back him and for all we know he has a sellable rationale for what he's doing.

From his point of view, it was a contest between Odium and Honor, the fall of either of them spelled the end, the pieces left on the board would be irrelevant. Where this reasoning would fail in my view is that it disregards Cultivation's claim to Roshar, which equals that of Honor. I don't get him really, he keeps repeating that his mind is not to be trusted but i can't see why, do we accept that his brand of madness is the lack of emotion ? (troublng on its own now that we understand Odium's nature) Why would that undermine his reasoning and ability to judge ? I can't help but think that this mess is Ishar's doing (yeah i'm set on him being a traitor). Every herald we've seen assumes him to be sane and trusts in his ability to guide them yet we know from the Stormfather himself that he's as mad as the rest if not more. My guess is he somehow managed to convince his fellows that he had retained all his faculties and has been hard at work fanning their selfdoubt to ease the manipulation.

That's not how i understood it, i think Odium did see the Diagram in its entirety and expanded it, but the branch linked to Renarin did not hold, as whatever manifestation of foresight or intellect this was could not account for another seer's interference, it's this reversal that he missed as he was focused on another section. Same for the words T spoke, Odium actually went to look at them again, they weren't hidden from him. So if Cultivation is palying a game here, it's either far too intricate for Odium to infer from the Diagram alone, or he did notice it all and didn't let on. What i'm wondering is whether Cultivation is as blind to Renarin's potential as Odium is, would be funny if our little Kholin ended up upending both deities' plans only to come up with his own miraculous solution.

@Devisor We shouldn't think Odium every time we see red, Urithiru has been pure for millenia, i doubt Re-Shefir had the ability or the intellect to corrupt it in any way and Odium himself has only recently started taking a hand in events, and only indirectly from fear of Cultivation.

Well even Kaladin didn't really need weeks to learn his surges, he got good at Lashings in a night and was using basic adhesion since he first saw it manifested. The struggle was figuring out how to trigger the surges, from there using them reliably wasn't too hard. Note that bridge four are nowhere near his mastery, from Dalinar's comment they're still just dropping like stones even after a few weeks using the surge, i'm waiting to see how bonding a spren will improve Teft and Lopen's skill.

I wonder if Szeth will play a role in unmasking Malata, she seems just bloodthirsty enough to react to Nightblood, funny also how her behavior, which would fit a traitorous spren, makes everyone else wary of her and diminishes her ability to harm their cause, even though restricting her to the portals ended up backfiring. Even funnier will be Szeth's stoic response to their outrage "I serve Dalinar Kholin, a man who knows truth ... Deal with it." As for Ash, it was long speculated that she would be the main Dustbringer, Dalinar's momentary Ta'veren pull gives it more credit, but i've learned from Eshonai not to take things for granted, after all it was Taln who felt the need to reach Dalinar, not her.

What worries me most about Moash is that the one thing that would cement him on Odium's side would be the murder of a fellow bridgeman, and i don't think i can take that. So if he could just trip into a pyre offscreen and the first Venli pov is the parshmen mourning around his ashes, i wouldn't blame you Brandon.

I think it'll depend on how Odium plays his conquest, so far he seems to want to keep both sides on the edge of morality until he's ready to sweep humanity from Roshar. Nale hasn't made it clear how far he'll be willing to follw Odium, the fact he is a full Skybreaker might be the ray of hope we can cling to, the fifth ideal makes it so that only his own judgement matters, he might hide behind the listener laws for now, but the moment they swerve from what he sees as just he'll probably take action against their god. I hope so anyway, i kind of like the guy.

Weren't there true depictions of the Heralds in Urithiru in the pit where Re-Shefir was lurking ? I don't think Ash knows the tower was reclaimed, so it would be natural to assume that the sketches were shared by the one being on Roshar who's both old enough to know them and has the skill to make them.

I believe Szeth had already bonded a spren as a child, the voice he mentioned hearing long ago similar to Nightblood's. Like Shallan the bond would have been there but dormant until he again spoke the oaths. Why the spren isn't visible despite Szeth feeling it's approval after the 3rd oath, i can't quite figure. Now that we know dual wielding is a thing, and knowing what Szeth can do already ... Odium should just go take a break for a few decades and wait for the current cast to die off really.

I believe Cultivation IS trying to use the diagram to backstab Odium, but i doubt he'd be blind to that, she got him once, i find it hard to believe she'll manage to get him again. When both sides have a way however imperfect to see the future it becomes really difficult to make plans long term. While genius T could be using dumb T, there's nothing to stop Odium from cutting a string or two along the way and replacing them with his own. Curious to see how it'll play out, but i don't think it'll be to the benefit of mankind.

I might be wrong, but i think it had to do with who followed him and who sought to oppose him. You have Taravangian whom Szeth probably considers evil trying to murder a man served by a Windrunner because he would be an impediment to his plans, add to that the way Dalinar acted in his few interactions with Szeth and it's not too shocking. Though i myself was surprised at first.

@SLNC Thanks ! I had assumed she was simply refering to herself there, but yeah it would make sense if it was also obliquely adding a line to her lousy "Kaladin is a no go" argument. All of this is too much for me to believe in a "they lived happily ever after" for the two of them, I do believe Kaladin is out of the romantic picture, and honestly that's good for him, but the Adolin-Shallan duo is heading straight for a wall. I don't know what i want for Kaladin going forward, we all want him to be happy and find balance, but Syl's way isn't necessarily the only one, i wouldn't mind if he turned into a solitary symbol one step below a deity, so long as he is somehow fulfilled by the role and not simply suffering through it.

Can you point me to where Shallan comments on her discussion with Kaladin ? i have trouble finding it.

And it was so odd coming from him, the guy always annoyed by people telling him to let go of his guilt suddenly wants to eraze his feelings to be able to move on ? Felt forced, i had trouble believing what i was reading.

Hmm, for the illumination surge, after his discovery of the gems in the library wasn't the "wave" that rippled out of his hands to open all the drawers a manifestation of the surge ? He was also quick to grasp their purpose "music of language".

Yeah, this is why Szeth's fellow squires and the two acolytes back in Edgedancer felt like second class Knights Radiant, at least with Bridge 4 they shared part of the journey so they got to appreciate and internalize the Ideals, they're not being spoon fed and still struggling to keep up.

I'm not worried about Szeth, I have a suspicion that Nale followed the same path when he bonded a highspren, vowing to follow Ishar as his third oath, since he assumed he was the least affected by their time in damnation. Whereas Ishar could have abused that position to steer Nale toward Odium, i think Dalinar will be able to keep Szeth grounded and help him take the step he himself took in this book, in accepting the burden of his past crimes.