Kuram

Kal will assume he still has the shardblade that he originally was given after the duel, I don't know why they wouldn't force him to relinquish the blade he was holding.

There's a new edgedancer, but he ran out of stormlight and is injured and a 7ft tall Fused dragged him into a manor as a hostage to bait Kaladin into fighting him in an enclosed space where he can't fly around. Kal goes in anyway, but a weird voidlight fabrial takes away his ability to surgebind and summon Syl as a weapon, but Kal is still holding stormlight. There are a couple other regular listeners there as regular soldiers, so Kal takes one of their spears and attacks them. The fused has a new ability to teleport, but when he does he disappears and is replaced by a smallish ball of light it seems, so as it zips behind him Kal stabs a dagger at where he thinks the Fused will appear and ends up getting him in the neck and taking him out. Lift also shows up during the fight to drag the injured edgedancer away. When the fight's done they disable the fabrial and take it for research, and then Lift says she saw some humans get pulled further into the manor (by the way it's on fire, forgot to mention). Kal goes further inside, sees two guys chained in a far room, but when he gets close he sees their eyes are burnt out, and then moash comes out from behind the door holding a knife to Roshone, and slits his throat. Then Kal takes out his blade and shouts for Moash to fight him, but he puts his arms up and says he surrenders after taunting Kal for trying to save someone he hated. Ends there. I'm not sure it's clear but I think this is Kal's village, based on where the story is in the first chapter released yesterday. Not sure if I missed something.

People like to say he's trying to reunite all the shards, but I don't buy that. I kind of hate the idea that the end-game of everything is to go back to square one.

I'm not sure that Odium would have divested himself of too much power while still engaged on Roshar. I don't actually know if they can divest themselves of a portion of power that they are 'aligned' to. I think there's a WOB that Trell is related to a shard that we have seen in text, so it can pretty only much be Autonomy or Odium I believe. Do you have a source for the dagger in OB being Raysium? I've never seen that confirmed.

Don't fabrials trap a specific type of spren in order to function?

The alethi are warlords playing at what they think politics is. Fighting, shows of force, backstabbing and appearance over substance.

Since true spren can become a 6in fork or a 6ft shardblade, I don't think there would be much problem with lesser spren become the size of a breastplate vs greaves vs helmet, etc. Their ability to become matter in the physical world seems to have some flexibility.

Very different people though. Pretty sure Brandon has said Kelsier would have liked Kaladin, but Kaladin would not have liked Kelsier (though Kelsier also would've been fine with that).

I think Brandon has said we've seen Kandra offworld, on roshar for example.

Maybe it's resemblance to the spren within the gem of the fabrial.

I think the fact that separate pieces can be destroyed almost certainly points towards each piece being a separate spren. The spren probably still consider themselves part of a whole, though. Whether its Connection or a bond or just the cognitive aspect of a suit of armor

I think you have that backwards. She is 14 'listener years', and if 10 listener years is equal to 16 human years, then she is 14*1.6 =22.4 years old by rosharan calendar (which is what I assume human years are measured on). Be interesting to find out what the listener calendar is based on, though.

I have a feeling the herdazian general is going to be a bondsmith. Brandon has said he's going to be an important character.

I believe survivors escaped to the south, we'll probably end up seeing them in RoW

I don't really ship or care about shipping, so this is more or less how I think the story might go rather than fanatical shipping... or at least a way it could go and be interesting: I've recently come to believe Kaladin will end up in some sort of relationship with Venli. I don't really have anything to base this on, but I think a traditional willshaper would be a perfect foil to Kaladin's personality, plus they are the same age roughly, or within a year or so. I don't really buy jasnah/kaladin, they would clash too much, Syl would just be weird in a not-good way, and I think Tarah represents too much of Kaladin's past, someone he isn't anymore. I also think it will have to be someone important to the story, more for narrative reasons than anything, and Kaladin has shown himself to be one of the few people (maybe in the whole world so far) who sees the Singers as real people and not just monsters or enemies. Syl doesn't mind Pattern though, after they spent that time together. I also don't like shalladin, however. Triangles are annoying, and Sanderson doesn't focus on romance so I think he'll shy away from that quagmire. A human-singer relationship would be much more interesting to explore. I think it's more likely that Vasher and Vivenna figured out how to fix the flaw of Nightblood and do another blade better. This is alluded to several times in warbreaker, with regards to the command and intention used to initially awaken it.

When the spren pass to the physical world I don't believe they still exist on the shadesmar side in the same form. My guess is that each piece of the armor is a distinct spren when alive. For 'dead' plate, I think the pieces are still distinct spren but they also form this cognitive idea of being a piece of a whole (there may even be Connection going on) which allows plates to be regrown when separated. The stormlight probably acts like a beacon to draw that dead spren back to where it needs to be. Spren don't die the same way as humans, so I don't think the corpses actually exist on the shadesmar side. They probably go wherever Maya goes when Adolin doesn't summon her, would be my guess. Makes me curious what shardplate would look like in shadesmar.

They're probably humane, because they don't trap true spren. It's akin to using chull to pull a wagon, for example. That is, until we get to a point where some true spren are being bound against their wishes. But don't forget that some spren are down for fabrial work. Think of the oathgate spren, for example. They seem real happy about working with humans, and they appeared to be genuinely sad they could not help Shallan due to their oath.

That actually makes her a little older than Kaladin, or at least the same age. The ratio is 1.6, Kaladin is 20 at the start of WoK, 21 during OB, and 22 for RoW (it's a year later), 10:16 means Venli at 14 listener years would be 22.4 human years. I don't think we can assume they have a smaller lifespan. In fact I'd guess the opposite, if they live the same amount of 'listener years' as a human would 'human years', then maybe they do live 1.6 times as long? Many of the older ones are probably just dead from the war.

Brandon has said era 2 happens sometime within the timeskip between stormlight book 5 and 6 (which is meant to be something between 10-30 years I think), which would place era one roughly 300 years before the first stormlight book if I got that right.

Fast enough. I could do warbreaker or mistborn era 1 books in around a day or a little longer (on the weekend) if it's what I did in my free time, and Oathbringer is a little over double the length of any of those. I expect I'll finish Oathbringer sometime on the weekend after release (since I read the part 1 chapters and I'll re-read them this weekend so I can start at part 2 Tuesday).