Willow

In chapter 37 of the Way of Kings, 'Sides', Roshone has green eyes: In Oathbringer, chapter 6 'Four Lifetimes' (page 77 of the hardcover), Roshone has yellow eyes: Is this an error, or was his eye colour changed between books?

But if Nale is a 5th ideal Knight Radiant, wouldn't his eyes be permanently light grey? At least I believe one common theory now is that the more oaths a Surgebinder says, the longer his eyes stay light. Kaladin is at three ideals, and his eyes stay light for several hours after he last summoned his shardblade.

Have mercy, I am only a normal human.

Yes, definitely. Even the Stormfather feels sorry for them now.

Well, I was trying to put it in a logical timeline for myself, so I wrote you a whole novel (it has mini-chapters!) on this subject. I hope it's all correct: Desolations and Heralds: start As far as I've understood it, based on the book and some of the theorizing on this site (credit to everyone discussing this), it goes something like this: There's a cataclysm on Ashyn, and the humans flee in terror to Roshar, bringing in their wake their god, Odium. Eventually the humans expand beyond the land they were given, stuff happens, and the Singers switch to Odium. During or just before what they now presumably call the first Desolation, Odium turns several of the Singers into Cognitive Shadows, beings who can return after they've been killed, and possess the bodies of other Singers, and who can also use Surges (presumably Voidbinding). These newly dubbed Fused could come back almost immediately after they were killed, which prolonged the fighting, etc. As a solution, Honor (who was now aligned with the humans instead of the Singers) gathered nine of the highest kings, scholars and important people of the age (and Taln, who wasn't supposed to join but did the best job anyway), and turned them into Cognitive Shadows. These newly dubbed Heralds would, at the end of a Desolation, willingly (or not-so-willingly, if they were killed during the fighting) go to Braize (Odium's home base, AKA Damnation), and as long as the Heralds were there, the Fused were held prisoner, and could not return to Roshar. The Heralds then spend some time (at first several centuries) being tortured, until one of them gave in to stop the torture, at which point it seems both they and the Fused were returned to Roshar, to prepare for a new Desolation. Desolations and Heralds: end As you can imagine, spending several centuries being tortured, fighting a Desolation, and then having to go back for more torture (lasting centuries) was not great for these Heralds' mental health, and so every round they broke faster and faster, until their last period on Braize lasted less than a year, and the last Desolation started (Aharietiam). Most of the Heralds were, frankly, broken, done, and didn't want to go back, and they were looking for a way out (as stated in the prelude, Jezrien says they took up the burden willingly, and now they could put it down if they wanted to). Only problem is, as soon as they break the Oathpact, there are no longer any restrictions on the Fused, and humanity would die out very quickly. At this point they realized that out of all 10 of them, nine of them had given up and started a new Desolation at one point.. except for Taln. So they figured, if we leave him on Braize (since he already died, and had already gone there in the prelude), the Oathpact won't technically be broken, the Fused can't come back, and we can stay on Roshar. Since they are Cognitive Shadows, and no longer really human, they didn't age or die during the 4500 (!) they left Taln to suffer alone, holding the Oathpact together all by himself (this is the Heralds betraying their fellow Herald bit). The Stormfather, being a spren (of Oaths) and not a human, was very offended by this bit of Oathbreaking, since he didn't really understand how humans work. Spren aren't as changeable, and probably couldn't be broken mentally the way the Heralds were. After Oathbringer, as far as we know, basically all the Heralds are still alive (and back on Roshar), except Jezrien (blame Moash). Knights Radiant However, a few Desolations before this last one, the spren had figured out how to bond with humans, and the organisation of the Knights Radiant formed. These Radiants also fought in the Desolations, guided humankind, etc. I'm not sure we have any information on how they reacted when the Heralds wandered off, maybe they believed this Desolation ended the same way all the ones before did, and the Heralds were back on Braize. Well, at this time, several thousand years back, humans were aware that they were refugees from Ashyn (they figured this out on occasion), since at that time they were still talking to spren who were around before that, among other things. But Honor always managed to convince them that they were righteous (in basically taking over the entire continent of Roshar). Honor's Death However, in between all these reaffirmations, Honor (and Cultivation) was trying to dodge around Odium, who was doing his best to kill both of them. Eventually, at one point, Honor took a fatal blow, and started the long process of dying (which took him quite a while). Unfortunately, near the end, the intent of his shard (keeping Oaths) started to overwhelm the rest of his personality a bit, and he started to rant and rave about how the humans destroyed their old world with Surgebinding, and the Heralds were Oathbreakers, and everything was going bad, etc. These humans, who were already centuries or more removed from Ashyn, and had mostly forgotten about it, were rather shocked and shaken, but as far as I know, still willing to continue on Knight Radianting. Then on top of all of that, the False Desolation happened, which eventually led to the Recreance and the ending of the Knights Radiant, which the Stormfather took as more Oathbreaking, which led him to the belief that humans can't be trusted. So what I think the Stormfather is blaming Honor for, is from switching from reassuring the Radiants to saying 'it was all your fault, and you will do this again.'

We just need to pry the name of every spren currently in Shadesmar and the physical realm out of Brandon, and then we'll know for certain.

Hmm, maybe, but the impression I got from Phendorama was more that she was a bit.. snobbish? More than that she was so much wiser than Syl. And I'm not sure the description really shows a connection. Both of those descriptions could be about Syl, depending on the dress she was wearing. And Syl has moments of maturity as well throughout the books, that sound quite similar to the quotes you gave (as an example, two quotes from WoK, chapter 67): And I mean, it's definitely possible that we're supposed to understand that the two-three female Honorspren mentioned throughout Oathbringer refer to the same individual, and I'm just not making the connection. But it might be that, as Syl once said: 'all spren are kind of the same person, in a way', which is why all the Honorspren look and sound similar at moments throughout the books. I guess we'll have to ask for a WoB about Teft's spren's name to be certain.

Wait, is Phendorana still who you refer to as Syl's aunt (the Gloomspren-hunter)? (Oathbringer gave us too many new (unnamed) female Honorspren ) If not, I'm curious to see why you got that impression, as we don't know that much about either Syl's aunt or Teft's spren, other than that they both seem like outgoing, take-the-lead types (hunting and coming to the physical realm). But I don't think it's possible in either case for Phendorana to be bonded to Teft. Because when we meet her on the Shattered Plains, Teft isn't there. He's in Urithiru, presumably after a night of using firemoss. While both Syl and Pattern on occasion wander away from their respective Radiants, I don't think we've every seen such a distance (Urithiru-Shattered Plains), and all the way back in WoK Syl had difficulty with a few days of travel by Chull. I think only the Bondsmiths are ever so far away from their spren, and they're special.

I don't think we know Teft's spren's name at all (unless there is a WoB I missed. I'd like to know her name). Phendorana was the 'high-ranked' female honorspren that showed up when Bridge Four was out on the plains during Rock's chapter. She might've also been the spren Syl referred to as her aunt (who hunts gloomspren), but I'm not sure we know that for certain. Phendorana seems to have been unbonded during Rock's chapter, as she and several others were evaluating the bridgemen to look for possible bonds. I think we can assume that at that time Teft was already bonded (he'd already said his second ideal, so I'm guessing it happened at least a while ago?). And even though we don't know that much about either Phendorana or Teft's spren, their personalities don't seem to match up? Phen seemed pretty disdainful of going to the physical realm, while Teft's spren seems to have been one of the first, after Syl. About the rest of the spren names, I think we know for certain that Cryptics are named for mathematical formulas (maybe the ones that form the fractal that is their head?). Honorspren all seem to use their own names, and three out of four have names without any hard sounds (Notum being the exeption). Sylphrena, Phendorana and Rua are all composed of softer consonants, with vowels (an 'a') at the end. Even Notum's name has a soft consonant at the end (and beginning), but the sample size of names we have is just too small to say anything definite. Cultivation spren also seem to use their 'own' name in the two cases we've seen, and Glys also sounds like it could be his own name instead of a nickname (though maybe it could be short for Glistening? While that sounds like a nickname for a normal Truthwatcher spren, Glys looks different now, and has looked different since before Renarin met him). Ivory renamed himself, and told Jasnah to use that new name, so we can't really say anything about Inkspren named based on that. The fact that Cryptics actually have complex formulas as their names, which are basically impossible to use in daily conversation made me curious about what naming conventions the other nicknamed spren use. Spark also seems to be a nickname, but could that be because her name would be impossible to pronounce otherwise? Say, one Ashspren's name is the sound a bonfire makes when you put new logs on it, and this other Ashspren's name is the sound that is made when you throw water on glowing coals, and no human is ever going to be able to replicate it succesfully. I'm not sure there's enough different fire sounds to name all the Ashspren, but it's something to think about.

I wonder if the spren on the ship are actually called mistspren. It's what Veil first calls them, and from then on that name is used to describe them. But it might not be their official name. If it is, I don't think they can be truthwatcher spren, as we have a WoB that explicitly says Brandon Sanderson doesn't want to canonize the Truthwatcher spren's name yet: If it's more of a nickname, like Lightspren/Reachers and Cryptics/Liespren/Truthspren, then it's still possible. I am interested to see if there are more types/levels of spren than just the Surgebinder spen and the lower spren. We know of at least one intermediate level of spren, since Cusicesh is not on the same level as the Nightwatcher and the Stormfather, but he's apparently a bigger deal than the other sapient spren. So there might be types of spren that cannot bond with humans, but are still sapient, and the mistspren could be one of those.

I definitely believe that there are strong hints that Jasnah has sworn the fourth ideal, and has shardplate, but the word used in the book is nonplussed, which can indeed mean that she looked perplexed, but not actually in this case, as explained by Peter Ahlstrom: So the fading lines could very well have been shardplate, but Jasnah seems to have mastered it already, since she looks completely in control (or she's a very quick learner). Your argument for why it was kept vague seems likely though.

Didn't Kaladin say in the early chapters that Roshone didn't even have ownership of the lands around Hearthstone? He was just a first point of contact for the higher ranked lighteyes. There must be a middle dahn lighteyes somewhere on Roshar that ranks higher than him . Several of them probably fled to Herdaz, it's very close to Sadeas' princedom.

I think Aesudan wanted to use the power of the Unmade for her own goals, not Odium's. She believed she could control it, and well, she was wrong. If we look at what Yelig-nar did to Amaram in the.. 10 minutes? that he was fighting Kaladin, I think Aesudan's definitely gone.

Oh, that might be an interesting idea. I think Aimia was at least part of the original design of Roshar (in the story, not just in the mind of the writer), since its shape is supposed to look like a particular slice of the Julia set (to hint to us that it was designed on purpose by some entity), but that doesn't tell us anything about how it was actually made, and meteorites are possible. I do wonder if meteorites that large exist, and what it would have done to the rest of Roshar? Aimia is weird anyway, and we know there's something interesting there.

There was another interesting WoB at a signing this month: This suggests that there are two metals (or one metal, aluminium, and one other material) that block Shardblades and surgebinding. So aluminium blocks Shardblades, and I personally think it's the metal that blocks the Soulcasting in Kholinar from being discovered, but there's also another material (the Blade guards) that would work, and that could be the 'metal from the sky' that is referenced.

Wasn't this where the library was? And I think Nohadon says he entered Urithiru through a tunnel in the mountains. That also suggests the presence of several lower levels to me.

I think part of the problem is that this outline has changed before the release of Oathbringer (without the writer releasing an updated spreadsheet to us). As far as I remember, Kaladin does not have any viewpoints in part 2. Looking at the viewpoint characters for each part also shows clearly that things have changed since we first saw this spreadsheet. Here are the viewpoint characters for each part (ignoring part five, because everyone shows up there): Part 1: Dalinar, Shallan, Kaladin, Adolin (same as part 3) Part 2: Dalinar, Shallan, Jasnah, Bridge Four Part 3: Dalinar, Shallan, Kaladin, Adolin (same as part 1) Part 4: Dalinar, Shallan, Kaladin, Adolin, Navani, Szeth (and Taravangian and Venli) Adolin has scenes in Part 1, 3 and 4, and none of the tertiary characters on this spreadsheet do. If the viewpoint for Tertiary character 1 (Adolin) moves from part 2 to part 1 (the beta readers have said somewhere that an Adolin scene was added to part 1 to fill in several small missing plotpoints, but I'm not sure when this scene was added), and the part 3 scenes were also added later (or originally written from a different perspective?), then it could be Adolin. But this is a stretch. Tertiary character 2... does not fit any character as they are placed in the story at the moment, so I think another character was moved to a different part: You're missing Navani in your post, who has viewpoints in part 4, when Dalinar was.. taking a break. She also has viewpoints in part 5. I think either Szeth or Navani used to have viewpoints in part 3, which were then moved to part 4 because it fit better narratively. My guess here is Navani, because I think Szeth's part 4 viewpoints were decided on a long time ago. So my guess for the tertiary characters is very similar to yours: T1: Adolin (with part 2 moved to part 1, part 3 scenes not shown) (I'm not sure about this one at all) T2: Navani (with part 3 moved to part 4) T3: Jasnah (with her part 5 viewpoint not shown) T4: Szeth N1: Venli N2: Bridge Four, including Moash (because of the chapter icon) So I'm reasonably sure about the last three, and Jasnah probably, but I think things might have changed so much we can't guess them accurately anymore.

I had the same feeling, that his eye colour is a representation of his bond with Syl, and as that grows stronger, his eyes will stay light for longer and longer. As Captain Ico says, at the 5th ideal, it will be very hard to break their bond, and Kaladin's eye colour will probably be permanent.

Yes, that's true, but I figured all of them were made at some point during the process of abandoning the tower. Leaving such a huge city takes a long time, so they could have been made at various stages. Otherwise, why would they choose to leave records in such a strange, difficult way, if they weren't sure they were planning to leave permanently, and other messages would decay over time. However, if your theory is true that part of the record was made after, could make one specific epigraph more interesting: "Don't tell anyone. I can't say it. I must whisper. I foresaw this." [30-20, a particularly small emerald] I thought that this meant the abandonment of the tower. If your idea of the Sibling and Ba-Ado-Mishram being able to 'compete' is true, that might mean B-A-M could also interfere with the functioning of Urithiru. The Radiants thought B-A-M had found a new way to fight them by attacking one of the Bondsmith spren (While actually the slow death of Honor was what was influencing the Sibling). In response to that, the strike team might have gone out to find B-A-M as a way to stop this (at the same time, other Radiants thought it was useless, and had started back-up preparations, AKA leaving the tower). Then they succeeded with B-A-M and failed with the parsh people. (I can't see why in this case they would use the Sibling to imprison B-A-M though, since in this scenario they went out specifically to protect them. Maybe it was an accident or their only chance.) And, lacking the Sibling, the tower's functions started to fail. And the Radiants started to abandon the tower faster. Then one specific Truthwatcher decided they had to leave a record that they had foreseen what happened to the parsh people and the Sibling.

This is an interesting theory, but I have a timeline question. Doesn't the gemstone archive imply that Urithiru (and possibly the Sibling, if it's truly the spren that powered Urithiru) has been failing for a while, even before the Radiants struck back at Ba-Ado-Mishram? They're already actively abandoning the Tower before they decided to form a strike team with Melishi.

Shallan has so much going on that sometimes she feels like she's very focused on herself (she has a good reason, but like you said, it's a lot of dense information). Maybe this is exacerbated because she's looking at things from a different (researcher's) perspective, such as when she was studying spren in Kholinar when all the others were discussing something else. This gives us interesting information, but it means she's very rarely discussing things with other people, making her feel isolated even when she's in a group. This also works the other way. We saw Kaladin from a lot of different outside perspectives, and the difference between how Shallan perceives Kaladin, and how Rock does is rather staggering. Bridge Four, I think, has a better idea of who Kaladin is as a person than some of the others (Adolin, Shallan) do. It's interesting storytelling, but frustrating. I felt on occasion that Oathbringer had so much stuff happening that there was very little time to talk, especially in Kaladin's, Adolin's and Shallan's storylines. They were always rushing off somewhere.

I think that's the point of the interludes though. There's one interlude character that shows up in all the parts who is more connected to the rest of the characters, but the other interludes are used as small views into the rest of the world, since there's no time to address them during the main narrative. It's a chance for Brandon to show off the world he created. Other interludes, such as Geranid (the two ardents doing spren research), Ellista, Puuli, Ishikk (from the Purelake) are all mostly disconnected from the rest of the book, except for worldwide events or vague references. In that way, this particular interlude is not so different. So this interlude is both a closure for one part of Tien's story, and maybe a introduction of the (awesome) Herdazian general, so we won't be too surprised if he shows back up (I hope he comes back, I liked him).

While on one hand I think her story was very complicated, and needed a large number of pages, it might have been interesting to see part of her development from an outside point of view. Especially since Shallan is, frankly, a very unreliable narrator. I have always thought a comment Brandon Sanderson made about her sense of humor was interesting; many of the people she tells jokes to only laugh not because her joke was really funny, but because she's above them in rank, and they kind of have to. I always find this sort of dissonance interesting in a book. Besides that, I think the Shallan and Kaladin viewpoints were out of balance. Kaladin really took a backseat during this book, and he's my favourite viewpoint in the Stormlight archive, with Dalinar in second place.

Yes, it definitely looks that way. It's also a continuation of the hints we got about the quality of Amaram's officers back in tWoK, in chapter 51, Sas Nahn (emphasis mine): On the surface, Amaram is the perfect lighteyed officer, but it doesn't hold water when you look deeper. It's all just appearance.

I think it's in part to show that Alethkar has been overrun, and the Alethi have had to flee to neighbouring countries. On the other hand, the guy in this particular interlude, Sheler, was the commander of Tien's squad back in the day, and he was probably responsible for sending Tien out onto the battlefield, (and to his death).The squadleader was Varth, but Sheler was the one who decided to send the messager boys to fight.