Raven Wilder

Just had another thought. Rhythm of War shows that the rhythms aren't simply part of how the singers communicate, but can actually have an impact on some forms of Investiture. Given that, I wonder if a hemalurgic construct (like a kandra or Inquisitor) being bombarded with the Rhythm of Awe or something like that might have an effect on them similar to emotional allomancy.

Clearly Pattern is a lot better about not screaming his head off whenever he or his Radiant touches a deadeye than Syl is.

Oh, that is brilliant! Well done.

Is there any confirmation that Sazed's letter to Hoid was written/sent during the events of Rhythm of War? The epigraphs don't always neatly line up with the chronology of the story.

I mentioned this theory in another thread, but there's Word of Brandon that Rayse specifically chose the Shard Odium because he felt it would fit him well, and he's Splintered other Shards instead of taking their power for himself because he doesn't want their Intents added to him, changing who he is. What makes Taravangian more dangerous is that he won't necessarily have that hangup, and might (whether by absorbing another Shard or Splintering his own Shard) be willing to fundamentally change the nature of Odium.

Say, Elantrians are drawing on the Dor's power constantly, right? So if one of them picked up Nightblood, wouldn't they just be able to let the Dor fuel it indefinitely, without needing to worry about their own soul being consumed? Or what about if a Feruchemist became a Surgebinder, and stored health in a goldmind while using stormlight to heal themselves? Would they be able to store stormlight healing's incredible effects inside the goldmind (essentially taking the same effect, but transferring it to less leaky container), or would they only be able to store their own, natural healing, just with stormlight healing negating any of the negative effects of doing so? Same thing goes with storing breath (not Breath) in a cadmiumind, when holding stormlight eliminates the need to breathe. Ooh! Since a lot of worldhoppers are turning up in the Stormlight Archive, someone should really hook Lift up with an unsealed bendalloymind with a ton of nutritional energy stored in it.

There's no higher authority to enforce this contract or set rules on what it can or cannot do. The only thing holding Dalinar or Odium to the contract is their own sense of honor (and the mystical ramifications of violating said honor code). For Odium to exploit the precise wording of the contract, I'd think it'd need to be something where the wording actually does seem ambiguous to him, not something where if you squint your eyes, hold it sideways, and deliberately ignore the obvious meaning, you can maybe see an alternate interpretation.

We've known for a while that it's possible to combine magic systems from different worlds, or at least to use Investiture from one world to fuel magic from another (that's how Vasher's managed to stay alive on Roshar). However, Rhythm of War is the first clearly described example of how it could be done, when we see stormlight being used to recharge the white sand of Taldain. Given the Ghostbloods are trying to create a business based on exporting stormlight to other worlds, there must be a bunch of other ways it could be used in foreign magic systems. But how exactly do you suppose it's done? I can picture how it might work with Nalthis's magic. You take a stormlight infused gem, then put a Breath into it like you would with any object (you won't be able to Awaken the gem, but that's not necessary). Then, when you take the Breath back, it might have become mixed with the stormlight, so now you've got an extra dose of Investiture. The Metallic Arts are the ones where I have a hard time visualizing how they'd use foreign Investiture, since they're built around people using the Investiture inherent in their own bodies, not drawing it from an outside source. Though, even without any of that, I suppose simply being able to export fabrials to other worlds could be big business. Even technologically advanced Scadrial would probably love to get their hands on spanreeds and painrials.

While you'd think they'd want to have a long discussion over the matter, it's possible that, due to one circumstance or another, they made the decision to do the Recreance very quickly, and so didn't have time to spread the word about what was gonna happen.

There's another wrinkle to consider here: how would you get the aluminum box into the Cognitive Realm? Since aluminum isn't affected by Investiture, wouldn't standard methods for transporting stuff between Realms not work on it? Of course, Vasher and Vivenna apparently were able to bring aluminum sheathes through the Cognitive Realm, but since they also were able to worldhop while being heavily Invested, they clearly know how to pull some special tricks.

I believe there's Word of Brandon that a Vessel can voluntarily abandon their Shard.

For me the biggest weakness, by far, was that throughout the occupation of Urithiru, I never felt like the tower was in any real danger. Brandon was so careful to have the invasion and occupation occur with a minimum of bloodshed, with all the depowered/comatose Radiants properly cared for, most tower residents being free to go about their daily lives, Navani being well cared for, Kaladin being able to allude pursuit pretty easily. Plus the singers' victory was based entirely on switching the tower's defenses from anti-Fused to anti-Radiant, and it was pretty obvious that once the heroes found a way to switch it back, they'd win pretty handily. It all just felt very safe and low stakes, which really shouldn't be the case when most of the book is focused on the villains taking control of the heroes' home base.

That was exactly my thought. After all, Cultivation's personality should be largely consumed by her Intent at this point; whatever her plans are, it's gotta have something to do with cultivating.

Assuming the Heralds' insanity is tied to the traits they're supposed to embody (hence Nale's rigid adherence to the law), then Ishar may be taking the Bondsmith call to unite people to the extreme. So having one realm for physical beings and another realm for spren? That's not very united!

I thought their fight earlier in the book had Kal learning Zahel was magic?

Yeah, he would almost certainly choose not to get involved. My question's not so much "why doesn't he help with the fight?" as "why doesn't Kaladin try to get him to help with the fight?"

Here's a thought: a Cadmium Misting could use their bubble of slowed-down time as a form of suspended animation. They hole up at a secluded cabin somewhere with plenty of food, water, and several crates worth of cadmium beads. They spend a few months there, constantly burning cadmium, so that when they finally stop and head back into society, its a hundred years later and they get to experience the wonders of a futuristic world. That could be a handy way to have certain characters (for instance, Marasi) survive from one era to another, without needing to hand out immortality to one and all.

Odium's stated goal for Roshar, using the planet to create the ultimate army of hardened soldiers, is something that could actually align pretty well with Cultivation's Intent: it's cultivating an entire people to be the best they can be (at killing and conquest, but still). Problem is, Odium was blowing it. Rather than getting tougher with each battle, the Fused just become more and more broken. And by the end, he was willing to give up on Roshar entirely, to head off for greener pastures and never have to deal with this quagmire of a planet again. So maybe Cultivation has no problem with what Odium is trying to do, but felt like Rayse needed to be replaced as Vessel to make that happen.

It seems like, during the year that passed between Oathbringer and Rhythm of War, the Unmade haven't been doing much (or that what they've been doing is behind-the-scenes prep work that's not showing immediate results). And we know at least two of them are currently trapped in gemstones and unable to do anything. In past Desolations, having all nine Unmade actively involved in the conflict likely made up for any deficiencies among the singers.

We know Zahel was at Urithiru early in the book, and Kaladin at least is aware that he has certain special abilities that don't seem tied to being a Radiant. Given that the singer occupation hinged on a device that knocked out Radiant powers, and only Radiant powers, Zahel's foreign magic system could have been a useful wild card. Sure, it's possible that he tagged along with the campaign that went to Emul, but a mention that he was no longer at the tower would have been nice. It also now occurs to me that, since his Heightenings give him both perfect pitch and perfect color recognition, he probably could have solved the whole Light/Rhythm problem in a matter of minutes (and, who knows, maybe he already did, and that's where Gavilar's anti-Voidlight gem came from).

Kalak may have thought that the thing keeping him bound to Roshar was the Oathpact, which was still technically in place so long as Taln held out on Braize. The Oathpact wasn't completely undone until Taln returned to Roshar and the Last Desolation began; Kalak may have been assuming that that would at last free him to leave for other worlds. That it didn't is him not understanding this stuff nearly as well as he thinks he does.

Actually, it'd be more like calling a Japanese person Japanese, since Japanese people don't call their country Japan; they call it Nippon (or Nihon, pronunciations vary). And I think it is kind of unclear what the name for the species is, since singer, listener, and parshmen seem to be treated as separate terms.

Here's a thought: Rayse is the one who made the contract with Dalinar, but Taravangian is still bound by it. This indicates that the contract is binding on the Shard Odium, not on Odium's Vessel. So if Dalinar defeats Odium's champion, all Taravangian has to do to get out of the contract is to stop being Odium. Brandon has said the reason Odium Splinters other Shards rather than taking their power for himself is because Rayse felt Odium's Intent suited him well, and didn't want the Intents of a bunch of other Shards mucking up his personality. But Taravangian isn't Rayse; he's willing to be self-effacing and self-sacrificing in ways that the prideful Rayse never could be. So if being Odium gets in the way of Taravangian's larger goals, he might decide to sacrifice or compromise his Shard, something Wit would never expect out of Rayse, and so was unconcerned about so long as he believed Rayse was still Odium. There's a few ways that could be done. One would be to set up a situation where he drops the Odium Shard completely, but is then able to pick up a different Shard that doesn't have so many restrictions (it seems doubtful he could get Cultivation to be Odium's champion, but if he did, and Dalinar somehow defied the odds and killed her, that'd leave the Cultivation Shard up for grabs). Another possibility would be to split Odium into two distinct Shards, sort of the reverse of what Sazed did with Ruin and Preservation; assuming the new Shards are treated as separate entities from Odium, they might not be bound by his promises. A third possibility: Honor is dead, but his power is still around; if Odium had a way to add Honor's remains to himself, he'd become a new Shard, a fusion of Honor and Odium, and it's debatable whether an oath made by Odium alone would still be binding on this new entity.

@Mistborn Jedi - That's one of the cleverest theories I've seen yet, and makes all sorts of sense. As for what Vin saw him doing, it could have been Hoid acting all non-chalant (humming and what-not), which Ruin recognized as him being up to something, and so hyped up Vin's "this guy looks like he's up to something" instincts.

Maybe it's a spectaclespren. Maybe in the past people started showing up at that waterfront each day at 7:46 to watch something else, and they got the attention of a spren that's attracted to large spectacles. Over time the original source of the spectacle stopped occurring, but by then the spren had become a spectacle in its own right, so now it shows up everyday because it's attracted to the spectacle of itself showing up everyday. Which makes me wonder if that guy who's documenting spren has a category for self-fulfillingspren.