Leyrann

While I agree that TOdium has the potential to be extremely scary, I feel like people here are a bit quick to draw conclusions.

Taravangian's goal has always been to save as many people as he could - he is just utterly ruthless in doing so. He saw Odium's victory as inevitable, and did what he could to save as many people in that inevitability. His goal was to save the whole world, but he settled for Kharbaranth - because it was better than no one at all.

Similarly, now from Taravangian's PoV we have a trustworthy assessment of what Odium, the Shard, actually is. And it's not just hate. It's also not just passion. It's all emotion, but with a focus on hate for some unclear reason. Still, that is more varied, more balanced, than many people previously thought. An issue that I suspect the Shard of Odium naturally has, is that the potential Vessels it will be compatible with tend to be emotional, rather than rational, people, who are as a consequence not very adept at acting on reason.

Taravangian, however, is adept at that. He operates on logic to a degree that is scary. This will naturally balance out with the Shard and yes, on the long term that will cause conflict. But it takes time before the Shard's Intent overtakes the Vessel - remember that Ruin was able to create a planet together with Preservation, and Harmony, now handicapped by an inability to act, could reshape a planet.

I believe that Taravangian's goal will be to save as many people as he can, and he will try to bear the burden himself. He now has the option to engineer peace between humans and singers - the only reason he would not go for that, would be because he believes they cannot live together. Does he believe that? He very well could. In which case I have no idea what will happen. But if he believes he has the power to engineer peace, he will do so. At least, so long as he can without contradicting his Intent.

I also believe he will start to look outward - from his PoVs after taking up the Shard, it seems he considers at least some of the other Shards a danger to the Cosmere, which he by his nature as a person cannot accept - as many people as possible need to be saved, by any means available. And I indeed would not be surprised if he starts picking up other Shards with the goal of balancing his Intent to align with his plans as a Vessel better.

I'm not sure if Taravangian taking up the Shard is a good or a bad thing. It is definitely very scary, but I could certainly imagine it to be to the benefit of the majority.

BUT THERE'S STILL SIX BOOKS LEFT TO GO!!

OH MY GOD HE'S DELVING INTO METAL FOR DEATH (WITHOUT PIZZA)!!!

SORRY FOR CAPS BUT IM SO HYPED!

I think we already know the antagonist of MB4, no matter who it is. Is it Hoid? Perhaps. Maybe it's a tri-Shard Dalinar. Or Kelsier. Elantris. People will clash, and Brandon will certainly try to get us as invested as possible, and what better way to do that than to pitch those we love against one another, on the assumption it makes sense they're opposed?

OO! OO! OOKLA!

9 hours ago, Kaladin's Girl said:

Guys, you are being too literal. This is a SCIENCE FICTION FANTASY story. ANY thing is possible. What I would like to happen in the story is for Syl to become human and marry Kal. Also I believe Kal is more than he appears.

Realism is considered an important part of fantasy, in particular by Brandon Sanderson.

10 hours ago, Ripheus23 said:

Well Tien would've been another one, and whichever of Kaladin's parents could be traced back likewise (maybe both could ). And maybe there would've been others, too, but they might all be dead (for whatever reason). Contrived,* true, but fantasy worlds often have a deficit when it comes to representing the true demographic scales (for example, Roshar has more countries than any other fantasy world I am aware of, but it still has way less than the real world).

*Much as Talenel holding out against torture for 4500 years is perhaps contrived?

Back in Tolkien's days, writers didn't really take such things into account (hence Aragorn). Nowadays, 70 years later, writers do, and Brandon first and foremost.

Kaladin could perhaps be a descendant of the male line (meaning only (oldest) sons), which would be less contrived.

That being said, I don't see why he would have to be. We already know his personal values are what attracted Syl.

On 16-11-2018 at 11:20 PM, Ripheus23 said:

Kaladin is the only living of the latest-born descendants of the first Windrunner, maybe. (Or some other analogy to Syl's being the Ancient Daughter or what.)

After 2000 years? (6000 since the Desolations started) That's ridiculously contrieved. Both 0 and hundreds are vastly more likely.

On 17-11-2018 at 4:10 AM, Gasper said:

It is mentioned that Kaladin looks like Jezrien, so it is possible that our now deceased Herald had children other than Ash and Kaladin is one of their decendents. Or Jezrien had a kid by accident while he was a crazy drunk and that kid was one of Kaladins ancestors.

That's not how genetics works. Over 6000 years, assuming an average of 25 years for a new generation, on average 1/1700000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000th of a certain ancestor's genes are still present when working under the assumption all ancestors are unique (which, I think quite obviously, is not true). Jezrien will occur quite a few times in that family tree, but that random farmer he killed for siding with the voidbringers may occur just as often.

Just now, Ripheus23 said:

either Adonalsium USED Investiture to rearrange preexistent matter and energy to form the Rosharan system, OR Adonalsium converted a blob of Investiture into matter and energy, arranging it Roshar-wise in the process.

Considering mass = energy = investiture I don't really see the difference. At least not from a god's point of view.

21 hours ago, Fanghur Rahl said:

inadvertently

That's not gonna work, due to the requirement of Intent. Once they know about anti-matter though...

38 minutes ago, Quantus said:

plus a whole host of FTL-based dangers.

Even disregarding everything else, just the sheer impact of an FTL object (and the inability to see it coming, literally) is a deadly weapon in itself:

https://what-if.xkcd.com/1/

On 10-11-2018 at 7:52 PM, Ripheus23 said:

Rosharan gravity must be crazy, on the full scale...

On 10-11-2018 at 8:35 PM, Quantus said:

In know right? That kind of thing would cause all kind of extreme tidal and Weather effects.  Whatever would the populace do?

Nah, planetary gravity isn't strong enough for things like that. Compare our solar system: The moon's gravity is stronger than the sun's gravity. The sun is roughly 5 times (iirc) closer to us than Jupiter ever is, and has roughly 100 times Jupiter's mass, making it's gravity roughly 2500 times stronger than Jupiter's gravity if I've done my math right. Jupiter's gravity, therefore, is something less than 0.04% of the moon's gravity (I don't remember the relationship in gravity between sun and moon). And we know how much (or actually how little) the moon influences our planet; some tides and that's it.

For extreme tidal effects from gas giants you have to look at their closest moons, as that's the distance on which it's actually strong (I believe only the closest of Jupiter's major moons has significant tidal effects, for example).

As for the highstorms, they don't line up with any astronomical phenomenon that we know about. They don't line up with the rotation of the planet (a day), the place of the moons (half a day, math is explained elsewhere) or the position of other planets (a specific planetary lineup cannot occur more often than the innermost planet's time to circle their star, meaning the shortest possible lineup is something at least somewhat longer than Ashyn's rotation around the star; considering the planet is in the habitable zone and the star is like F- or A-type (it's white) Ashyn is probably about as far from the star as the Earth is, and has a similar length of a year).

The only astronomical phenomenon that I could see influencing the highstorms would be the star's rotation, but that would likely not be able to explain the variance in when highstorms occur. It would probably still require magic, as well, to carry over such strong influence.

On 10-11-2018 at 8:35 PM, Quantus said:

It IS interesting that everything within the Inner Space of the solar system is very prominently Three's with the Ten Giants outside of them.  And also how only Roshar has any moons, when Gas Giants usually have bunches more than their solid brethren

It's quite possible we're just not aware of the gas giant's moons. Astronomy doesn't seem to be very advanced on Roshar. (sadly, for us Cosmere-lovers)

On 10-11-2018 at 8:39 PM, Ripheus23 said:

I'm gonna guess/postulate that most of the matter used in the system was condensed from Investiture, rather than being already present and then rearranged via Investiture. I don't know much about planetology(?) so IDK how likely/possible it is for there to be a solar system with a star the size of Roshar's, and 10 gas giants in it, likely/possible on the assumption of a normal stellar-evolution process being the cause of the system (I know Adonalsium made the system but this could otherwise mean that It created the nova that eventually at its core became the Rosharan sun and then the debris coalesced into the planets).

There's some weird stuff in the system (the moons in particular) so it's probably a safe assumption that Adonalsium handcrafted it. He for sure handcrafted life on Roshar because a white star doesn't have a lifespan long enough for such evolution to occur (on the assumption that Earth is average); expect something from 100 million to maybe 2 billion years.

(it's astronomy btw)

23 hours ago, Zellyia said:

I'm curious about if the orbits of the 3 moons potentially has them on a collision course with one another or if the timing is right so that they will always miss each other.  Cause that could all go very very wrong.

They're likely in the same orbit. Even if they wouldn't be, however, they'd never be on a collision course because their periods are exactly the same (hence why they always appear at the same times). Still, they're close enough to Roshar and one another that their positions aren't stable on an astronomical scale. It works fine for Cosmere scale though.

34 minutes ago, Use the Falchion said:

So I remembered with the timeframe not working out part. I momentarily forgot that Eras 2&3 take place between SA arcs. Which is why it's back to the drawing board!

For the record, Era 2 takes place either in between the SA arcs or during the second arc. Era 3 takes place sometime a few decades to a century later (depending on how fast technology on Scadrial will progress...).

2 minutes ago, Child of Hodor said:

Lightweaving by itself couldn't do the damage, since it is illusion magic.

I disagree. It creates light, which isn't an illusion, it's just intangible. However, on a deeper level it seems related to waves, and, well, cymatics does the rest. We even got a nice piece of foreshadowing about the Plains with that .

4 minutes ago, Child of Hodor said:

We've seen Stormfather and Pattern's powers combined when Dalinar and Shallan worked together to create the 3D map, other radiants can combine powers for unique effects. 

Isn't that (likely to be) a Bondsmith unique thing though?

15 hours ago, Vissy said:

Honor was the one who regulated Stormlight and a Radiant's access to Surgebinding. Without that active director behind the Investiture, you could technically tap into as much power as you managed to gather. So, someone with the surge of Division and a lot of Stormlight could do something like, say, create the Shattered Plains. 

Shattered Plains are more likely from lightweaving though, considering their symmetry.

Also, Brandon has said before (though in relation to allomancy at the time) that a Shard can't purposefully hold back their Investiture; if someone meets the requirements to use it, they can do so no matter what the Shard wants.

What if the entire "seeing the future is of the voidbringers" idea is wrong though? Corrupting religion isn't a first in the Cosmere, and seems to not even be a first on Roshar. How do we know Truthwatchers couldn't see into the future in some way?

2 minutes ago, Calderis said:

That is what allomantically inert means. It's inert. It has no effect, positive or negative. 

Aluminum is not inert. It actively negates anything done to it. 

I'm just paraphrasing Peter. https://wob.coppermind.net/events/306/#e11239

Quote

Peter Ahlstrom

Silver is not Allomantically inert the way aluminum is. In that annotation, Brandon just meant that silver didn't do anything if you swallowed it and tried to burn it. It can be Pushed and Pulled. Years after Brandon wrote that annotation, what he means by "Allomantically inert" has changed.

Wasn't Sja-Anat unable to change KR spren in the past?

14 hours ago, Bigmikey357 said:

We know the metal is allomantically inert, at least so far. It's significance in the future of the Cosmere is up for debate.

Just making clear here, there's been a change in definitions over time. Brandon originally called it allomantically inert in the annotations to mistborn, but back then it meant "you can't use it for allomancy", while nowadays we know it as "you can't affect it with allomancy", which is very different and not true for silver.

On 3-11-2018 at 1:46 AM, Kaladin78 said:

Edit: Darn, how do you do spoilers?

[ spoiler ] text [ /spoiler ] but without the spaces.

Alternatively (at least on PC) use this button at the top of the reply box:

Silver doesn't seem to do much apart from some stuff on Threnody.

Aluminium on the other hand...

So, did any minor character in Oathbringer use "I am, [...], [rest of sentence]" at some point?

She's a Sleepless, also known as Dysian Aimian, and she probably just posed as cook to get into the right position. A major goal of the Dysian Aimians seems to be to keep people away from Aimia, which bears some kind of secret.

24 minutes ago, Kal-Eldin said:

The church already stated pretty clearly it won’t support Dalinar when the council of curates excommunicated him. 

That does not mean they'll join Odium though.

1 hour ago, dvoraen said:

Let's also not forget the fact that the Vorin church is extremely unlikely to believe that Taln is the Herald of War, especially with those dark eyes of his and presumably no way to prove it (to say nothing about his mental state).  Even if he had his Honorblade, they would likely decry him as a Voidbringer or "just a Radiant" simply because he didn't fit the current narrative for how the Heralds are supposed to be.

So yeah, I'd be surprised if Dalinar had anything less than a sheer cliff wall to scale, in terms of getting the rest of Roshar to truly listen to what he has to say. He has very little in his arsenal that is guaranteed to get through to others except for his tenacity, really. Matters at Thaylen City will help, but it is pretty much a given that "the Alethi" tried to take it over.  There is still plenty of debris to dig through, literally and figuratively.

He does kind of have the return of the Knights Radiant on his side...

As for Taln, I doubt Dalinar is going to place much importance on him (or Ash) until they're in a somewhat stable state.

Decrying a human as Voidbringer is something I think is very unlikely, as that goes completely against the Vorin narrative (despite the historical basis for it...).

Well, we already know autism runs in the Kholin family...

I don't think the Ardentia will join the Voidbringers for any reason though. At worst they might help Taravangian without knowing he serves Odium indeed.