Isilel

She is getting steadily dumber and less capable as her romance with Taln develops. This is a common romance trope, to make the heroine depend on her love interest more and more, and I have always disliked it. In fact, by late book I can only agree with Meridas that she is much less clever than she thinks herself to be and her abilities are largely an informed attribute combined with lucking into having very capable men working for her. And her breaking down during the battle + publicly revealing herself as an Awakener when Dalenar clearly badly needs her support is not irrational? Her believing a very clumsy lie dished by the ex-Herald Prael is not stupid? I beg to disagree. I didn't hate the relationship here, BTW, but I am very much against it happening in canon. Not the least because there he already got his princess and I would hate it if they fridged Shalash just so he could get together with another royal woman! I fully expect that once we get to Taln's and Shalash's flashbacks, we'll see shades of this early romance there. On the contrary, it should have made it very easy for her many enemies to insert assassins and spies close to her. She was so determined to keep her research about Urithiru secret, but with strange servants necessarily having access to her quarters and things, it shouldn't have been possible. Canon Jasnah should have had at least a bodyguard or 2 and a loyal maid to be plausible back in WoK and early WoR. Oh, well, can't have everything, I guess. Having finished the book, I still vastly prefer the canon version. BTW, another mirrored/re-used plot point is that canon Jasnah is, ironically, in proto-Taln's position in WoK/WoR! She has deduced that a Desolation is coming and tries to warn and prepare the leaders, while also figuring out what it all means. And her efforts are nearly as futile as his, in the end . Another thing that seemed odd to me is that there was no hint of sword-nimi in proto-WoK. Vasher, who is totally Jarnah the Conquerer in disguise, is present, but I always thought that Sanderson had written Warbreaker to introduce and establish this very special sword. Now I am at loss as to why he thought that a SoA prequel set on another world was needed. Was proto-Jasnah supposed to make the sword in this continuity? Is this why she was positioned as a super-strong Awakener? The Shin invasion here is hinted to have happened due to a mistaken belief that their Desolation equivalent was coming 17 years earlier than it actually did. I have to wonder if it had also been the motive/pretext for Shin invasions in canon and the reason why Szeth was slapped down so harshly when he began talking about the voidbringers' return. Having been burned in the past - and possibly having reformed their society in response, the Stone Shamans were understandably very resistent to such claims.

It is also clear that in canon SA Taln was in a romantic relationship with another princess, which had begun as "star-crossed lovers", so that part of it was retained, too ;). Good observation that this proto-Jasnah is much more like Navani than the canon Jasnah. And while I like the former, I love the glimpses that we had of the latter and hope that she will still get a real main character billing (i.e. not get short-changed like Eshonai/Venli/Szeth) in the back five. I am also tired of romance being an obligatory sub-plot for major female characters and an "ice queen" melting and acting irrationally due to true love trope, so I am glad that Sanderson seemingly changed these aspects. One area where proto-Jasnah is superior is that she has an entourage, as is only logical for somebody in her position. It never made a lick of sense that canon Jasnah travelled by her lonesome, yet still always managed to look immaculate and wasn't attacked much more often. Or that she met assassins without backup in her pre-Nahel bond days and lived to tell the tale. Oh, and I think that Shinri displays some of the traits of canon Shalash and I have long thought that Shalash will ironically turn out to have been a musician and singer rather than any kind of visual artist. Maybe Hoid's flute belonged to her at some point?

"Anytime too much power—too much Investiture, too much self—congregated, realms became porous and time behaved oddly." This makes me wonder if the apostate Heralds' odd perception of time which was highlighted in OB, is related. Shalash "losing centuries to dream", Nale being surprised and disturbed when confronted with decayed stuff in his old caches, etc. They are highly invested individuals, after all, due to channelling unlimited power through their direct connection to Honor in the past. Also, I have a strange feeling that the prophecy in Puuli's Interlude in OB somehow has to do with it, too. And if some Radiants figured out how to leave Rosharan system during the Recreance, wouldn't it have made sense as an alternative to killing their spren to go somewhere where time passes very slowly? Hm... I love very much that we again see Syl interacting with people who are not her bondmate. She used to do it a lot back in WoR and Pattern did some too, but then in OB there was much less of it - to avoid making Renarin and Glys very obviously stand out as odd and suspicious, I imagine. Hopefully, now this will continue and expand. Kaladin being the champion is the most obvious/expected direction to go, but since OB I am leaning towards Szeth being the anti-Odium side's champion in the end and the battle of champions being Szeth against Nale. Book 5 is the Skybreaker book, after all, it would make sense for them to have the pride of the place, rather than Kaladin yet again, sigh. I really hope not. Been there, done that more times than I can count. Give me something fresh. Well, I remember a WoB that Kaladin will have more page-count in RoW than in OB, so, sadly, I can't see Navani topping that. But Dalinar will have less than in WoR, IIRC, so yes. Shouldn't Dalinar have some professional surgeons/doctors who are better qualified for that? Kaladin certainly has a lot of experience with field medicine and his father trained him well, but he was just 15 when he left for the army. It would feel very contrived to me if he somehow turned out to be the bestest medical professional in Urithiru. Training soldiers in field medicine while working on his own skills as a surgeon would make more sense, IMHO. Also, there are a lot of non-combat duties that a Windrunner is uniquely suited to perform - running messages, transporting people, working an Oathgate, safe-guarding airship tests, scouting without engaging, checking on the problems of various settlements, etc. It would be a waste for Kaladin to wholly concentrate on things that normal people can do as well or better than he, at the expense of things that are completely beyond their capabilities, but well within his. IMHO, YMMV. Carrying a dead blade didn't prevent Dalinar, Eshonai or Ehlokar(!) from attracting Radiant spren. So far only Syl has been completely repelled by the dead-eyes. After this chapter we can't even say that all the honorspren would share her attitude. I expect that a number of the members of Bridge 4 are now Knights with spren of their own. The fact that Kaladin can stand down from combat duty strongly suggests this. So, they'll now be more than his appendages and while the friendship will endure, it would feel unnatural for them to still be joined at the hip. Rather like Star Trek movies, you know? Where all the bridge crew logically should have long had the ships or high-level positions of their own, but they are kept together in a highly contrived fashion. Those members of Bridge 4 who remain his squires will continue to be his entourage, of course. But that's another problem with Kaladin wholly devoting himself to surgery - a 3rd Oath Windrunner is more than a single person with surges and a shardblade, with his squires he is a whole platoon of the same. Kaladin's choices would potentially severely limit his squires usefulness too. It isn't like all or even most of them are medically inclined. I loved that Syl's first knight was into creating infrastructure, and I'd like to see more non-traditional Order members, but Our Heroes also live in a situation where there is no slack. And even Relador, who lived in an era with thousands of other Radiants and no Fused had to fight in the end... So, in the prelude where Kalak and Jezrien actually interact, he calls Jez by his name. "My lord's own blade" from WoR prologue refers to Honor, as in "honorblade" = "my lord's own blade", IMHO. Judging by Shalash swearing by Adonalsium, the Heralds didn't necessarily see Honor as a god, and even if they did "lord" would be an appropriate appelation to use, as it is iRL. Etc. All the fundamental decisions that the Heralds made were Ishar's ideas. He came up with them and convinced the others to follow through. This is leadership. We haven't heard anything comparable about Jezrien.

Indeed. I agree with the idea that he was likely using a Dawnshard before he became a Herald and that it was somehow used - and somehow used up, given that Honor in Dalinar's final vision believed that all the Dawnshards were gone, to establish the Oathpact. This confirms what I have been suspecting for some time - that Ishar, rather than Jezrien, was the most important Herald and their de-facto leader. He certainly seems to have made all the crucial decisions so far. Vorinism ia just too focussed on Jezrien's mortal background as king. However, I don't think that Ishar could have been the one to create/discover the Nahel bond, since both young Nohadon in one of Dalinar's regular visions and the in-Universe Word of Radiance book state that the surgebinders first appeared _between_ the Returns. Oh, and Taln's monologues support this too - didn't he claim that appearance of surgebinders was "a surprise"? Personally, I suspect Cultivation's hand in this and hope that we'll finally hear about a female Bondsmith being responsible. So far we had Ishar, Melishi, Dalinar, possibly Nohadon - high time for us to hear about a Bondsmith of consequence who was a woman. It also looks like Lirin's PoV chapter was a prelude to a major disaster that caused Kaladin's current predicament. From the back-cover description of RoW we know that a war was going on for a year and I expect that Kaladin had been in the thick of it, until things happened. Lirin seems to be a goner, but I hope that Hesina is still alive. I'd like to learn more about her as a person rather than an adjunct to her husband. Very interesting information about Syl being different from other honorspren - it has been clear since we met Captain Notum that Syl's earlier claim that all spren of the same type have the same personality was wrong, but it seems that there is even more to it. Cord - we already knew that the Horneater women could fight when Rock casually commented in his PoV in OB on his wife's superb archery in defense of the caravan. It is also clear that Rock himself was twisting the truth about his people's customs re: professions of various sons, if not directly lying. If they do exist in this form, they clearly don't apply to the nuatomas, which, as has been heavily hinted, he now is. Didn't he tell Bridge Four how _nuatomas_ were the ones who challenged Alethi and Veden shardbearers to the duels for their shards? Clearly, they aren't forbidden to fight, despite being eldest sons. Rock just feels immensely guilty about the deaths of his brothers, for some reason, and refuses to take up responsibility which is now his, by pretending that he isn't allowed to use weapons. Still, it is very interesting that Cord is the one with the Plate. We also know that Rock had been cooking even when he was the "warrior son", so I guess that she is the same? A very intriguing confirmation about the nature of Plate and quite a surprise that it feels so benign to Syl. This hints that a good compromise could be achieved with modern fabrials as well. "Different" light of Urithiru - given how the voidlight was previously described, I don't think that it could be it. But some blend of Honor's and Cultivation's light is likely. IIRC there was a quote in some of the in-world writings about Urithiru being "closest to Honor", and we also know that the stormlight is retained in spheres for much longer there. Wouldn't jive with Sibling being an Odium spren at all, IMHO. Oh, and the intelligent spren being so "new" confirms my theory that they evolved due to human influence. This is the meaning of "Though broth are we, their meat is men. ” from the Listener Songs epigraphs in WoR.

Taln was _the_ main character of proto-WoK, though, so it is more likely that he'll be one of the mains in the second half, IMHO. There is a WoB that Vedel hadn't been seen on the page so far, though. My money is on Battar, because I am under impression that Pailiah appears older and possibly also has a "Shin" look. I don't remember why I think this, though. Maybe some WoBs? And I don't think that Liss is Chana because Chana's association with distance running and the military leads me to expect a more athletic woman. Concerning Dova, T. lied about her warning him about the imminent Desolation - it had been Gavilar on the night of his death. She may still be a Herald, of course, but if so, I'd tip on Vedel (nice reversal of her attributes) or Pailiah. P.S. My not-so-minor question is where are the Listener children? IIRC there were 30K Listeners before the battle of Narak, yet not a single child appeared in Eshonai's PoV. Corollary to that - how long did Listeners live and how quickly did they reach adulthood?

So, this has been my theory since WoR's Eshonai's prologue and Taravangian's PoV chapter, where we learned that Gavilar convinced him of the imminent Final Desolation on the night of his death, and IIRC I have posted it here at some point too: Gavilar absolutely was using the SoH for his own ends and knew the truth about the Heralds, but he was indeed trying to start a _false_ Desolation. The reason being that he was a recepient of the Stormfather's visions, knew that the Final Desolation was inevitably coming and wanted Rosharan humanity to recognize their danger and become united and prepared whilst dealing with the lesser threat. We have seen that neither Jasnah nor Dalinar have been able to convince people of the impending Desolation and parshmen's connection to the voidbringers until the Everstorm. Well, a false Desolation would have solved all this and allowed humanity to gain experience dealing with Regals and Unmade, motivated the Radiant spren to bond again, yet also wouldn't have forced them to immediately contend with the Fused and Odium's direct interference, as actually happened. Gavilar's False Desolation was supposed to be a general rehearsal before the actual potentially world-ending conflict with Odium and the Fused. I also think that while Gavilar did managed to find a trapped Unmade, it wasn't Bo-Ado-Mishram, because he could have just released her to achieve his goals and wouldn't have needed to bother with the Parshendi otherwise. IMHO, Gavilar hoped that when offered a chance to regain their former glory, the Parshendi would help him locate and release BAM. Which, along with his ignorance of Nale and his Skybreakers' millenia-spanning mission proved his undoing. YMMV.

Gavilar had given Eshonai one sphere and had one on his person when he was killed. IIRC Navani told Dalinar after he captured the Thrill in OB, that Gavilar had posessed several spheres that glowed with similar voidish light. It was an intelligent spren that was able to make itself invisible - which we don't know that Ulim can do that. IMHO, it was Nale's highspren - we at least know that they have this capability. And Nale, who in his unhinged mind, was doing everything to _prevent_ Desolations from ever happening again had excellent reasons to want Gavilar, who tried to _cause_ the same dead. But since Gavilar wasn't likely to write his own death warrant, Nale could only move against him indirectly, so he made sure that the Parshendi had a perfect tool to eliminate Gavilar, once they learned about his sinister intentions. Well, some of the Unmade, like the Thrill and Ashertmarn(?) are huge, so I do think that size of the gems that they can be trapped in reflects that. Yelig-nar, OTOH, is human-sized.

Truthwatcher 74%, Elsecaller 73%, Lightweaver 68%, Willshaper 63% - seems accurate enough, though I'd previously figured I'd be an Elsecaller. With this new information, though, it makes perfect sense. Bondsmith is the lowest at 41%.

Her armor was glowing red and she was moving frictionlessly through the water - definitely a Dustbringer. And a few soldiers with her were glowing with stormlight, therefore squires. I agree that craftsmen, builders, etc. are very reliant on cooperation and apprenticeships, so from this PoV the Willshapers not having squires would be odd. At the same time, I don't see how squires would fit with the freedom focus of the Order as explained in this new description, or, for that matter, why this philosophy would be particularly attractive to craftsmen specifically... And on the gripping hand their spren the Reachers live in conventional top-down hierachies on their ships, as seen in OB, which also doesn't fit. So, color me confused. OTOH, I also don't see for which of the other Orders it would make sense to not have squires. In scholarship mentor - student relationships are very important too, so Truthwatchers should have squires, IMHO. Maybe the Elsecallers, with their focus on individual excellence? Yes, Jasnah did think that Shallan was becoming her squire at first, but did she have accurate sources about Radiant squires at her disposal? She may not have known that she couldn't have them. @Oltux72: Mathematics and art aren't antithetical - on the contrary, iRL visual arts and music talents are adjacent to and overlapping with mathematical ones. Admittedly, less so in the modern arts than in the past, but Roshar is still at the stage where they are fairly tightly interwoven.

Now that we have the new and more comprehensive Radiant Orders descriptions, which of them are likely not to have squires? Here is the new info for reference: https://wob.coppermind.net/events/424-the-ten-orders-of-knights-radiant/ From the books we know that Windrunners, Skybreakers, Lightweavers and Dustbringers (Dalinar's Purelake vision shows a Dustbringer with her squires) all have them and now, to my great surprise, the Bondsmiths were also confirmed. But personally, none of the new details about the Orders offer a clue about which of them lack squires. Well, the Willshapers, perhaps, with their focus on freedom? Though that would mean that Venli will have it even harder than I expected. And speaking about the Willshapers focus, isn't it very odd that their spren, the Reachers have a very conventional, hierarchical ship's crew with a captain as seen in OB? This does clash a bit with the Order's image, IMHO.

Indeed. I was sure that they were the ones that didn't have them. But the wording also suggests that it was something that only happened occasionally, so I suspect that it requires more intentionality than with some other Orders, like Windrunners and Lightweavers, were squiring just happens as a matter of course. I also find the information about the "retinue" super-interesting, although it is difficult for me to imagine how non-powered people could have protected a Bondsmith against the supernatural threats, like the Fused, the thunderclasts, the Unmade, etc., when we have seen that even the best warriors with access to dead shards are overmatched by them. I always thought that the Windrunners were the ones who protected the Bondsmiths. Hm... I also disagree about Kadash - Sanderson pointing out that religious leaders tend to become Edgedancers is oddly specific (not to mention debatable from iRL point of view) and IMHO points at him. Also, it was Teleb who had been forced into the elites and he never had a problem with the Blackthorn and is now dead. We don't know the circumstances of Kadash joining the elites.

I really doubt it because Rosharans are, among other things, significantly taller than cosmere-average because of their lighter gravity. And Alethi are the tallest among them, so they would look like veritable giants to people from the other worlds, or at least like professional basketball players do to us. It is no coincidence that most suspected worldhoppers are described as noticeably short by the PoV characters. Felt only reaches Dalinar's chest, for instance, and both Adolin and Kaladin are taller than Dalinar. Vasher and Vivenna don't look short to the Alethi, but both of them can change their body shape and size within limits - I doubt that either had proper Alethi eye-shape back in Warbreaker either and Vivenna's eyes certainly weren't orange! I suspect that Hoid can do something similar, because in none of his appearances on several planets is his size noted as remarkable in either direction. As has already been mentioned, Breaths were just the easiest investiture for a Rosharan to get, until the return of surgebindings. Also, it seems like Riino was getting a steady enough traffic of clients to survive in his lighthouse, so Rosharans worldhopping may not have been as rare as one would assume. Either the Horneaters are accomodating, or there is another way to get into CR, catching Honor's Perpendicularity somehow - probably more feasible in the west, where storms are not so deadly, though.

But unlike how it normally is with US and British covers, Sanderson had the final word in selecting this cover, no? So, it is less likely to seriously mispresent things. Like, I don't think that he would have picked one with Adolin on it, if Adolin wasn't present in Shadesmar with Shallan in the storm scene.

I don't see why there has to be any more to it than the Fused attempting to track down, collect and use all the deadplate and deadeyes from the Recreance. We didn't see the Fused use shardblades yet, but do we have any reason to think that they possessed more than a couple of them in OB? They got 2 complete shardsets from Graves and Moash and might have also obtained Teleb's plate, which was lost during the battle for Narak, IIRC, and never recovered. That's not a lot, there is a certain learning curve to becoming proficient with a shardblade and Odium expected the battle for Thaylenah to be a slumdunk, so it is no wonder that the shardblades weren't transported there. Also, certain types of Fused might not be hindered by the dead shardplate in their surge-binding, as long as they left one hand bare - those with Division, Soulcasting, Tension and Cohesion, even Illumination, as long as they didn't try to disguise themselves. Even if for some reason the Fused can't use the shardplate, giving it to the new singers in appropriate combat-oriented forms would greatly enhance their military capability. And I am pretty sure that we'll see hundreds of Fused armed with deadeyes, which is going to be a massive paradigm shift from all the previous Desolations, where they had to make do with inferior weapons. They have already looted some soulcasters too, so they now have a number of tools that were previously restricted to their opponents. And, as @Dreamer pointed out, there is an odiuminium dagger as a new development, with either other 9 like it or swappable trap-gems, which is their "final solution" to the Oathpact problem. Also, the Everstorm. They might also try for the rest of the Honorblades. That's their side of the arms race, IMHO, while the new Radiants and their allies are going to be inventing new fabrials, with the goal of giving non-invested people a chance to fend off the Fused and the thunderclasts, because with them respawning via Everstorm the new Radiants won't be able to delude themselves into believing that they could win without greatly enhancing military capabilities of normal soldiers, as their predecessors disastrously did. Possibly the anti-Odium side will get some magi-tech input from a certain outworlder, because of this WoB: BTW, do we know that the Stonewards had fewer _knights_ than the Windrunners before the Recreance? I always thought that the Windrunners were the most numerous because of their many squires. But in any case, there used to be thousands of Radiants back then, so the knights in the Feverstone vision likely don't even represent the majorities of their respective Orders...

Concerning Odium's power, I am not sure if Hoid would want connection to him at this time. But he can convince Sja-Anath to corrupt his Cryptic in a pinch, I guess? Thus getting access to powers of all 3 Shards in Rosharan system through one tidy Nahel bond package. Odium doesn't need Nightblood to quash Hoid like a bug, BTW. Didn't Hoid tell as much to somebody in SA at some point? Maybe Dalinar?

Personally, I hope that some of the existing Heralds are going to redeem themselves by returning to Braize for the break between the 2 pentologies and buying Rosharans time to come up with a different solution. They are going to be hunted down one by one and instead of capture & torture killed once and for all with respective Raysium daggers. When the last of them is gone, the second series will start. Taln and Ash will remain on Roshar for reasons and keep the leadership informed about the attrition among their fellows. Jezrien's death demonstrated that a new Oathpact, no matter how carefully constructed, can no longer provide anything more than a short-term relief, because human participants can be simply eliminated. Regarding the working title of SA, the "Oathshards" would have most likely been another term for the honorblades, IMHO, since Taln's original arc in proto-WoK revolved around locating them and piecing together the defection of his fellow Heralds.

I wish there was an "alright" option in the poll. Kaladin is the most stereotypical "fantasy protagonist" of the PoVs, even though done well, and as such was a little boring to me. He hogged too much limelight in WoR, IMHO, and his "saving the day in the nick of time" schtick was a bit overdone there. I liked his story arc and page-count in OB more (even though his fight with Amaram was silly and fan-servicy, YMMV) and I would have preferred it if he didn't become more prominent again. He had his book and a big chunk of WoR - let the other characters get their time in the sun now. Alas, it is not to be...

Wouldn't all the differences between the planets of Roshar and Earth throw the most sensitive technology off? Like, fuel and propellants catching fire and exploding much more easily on Roshar, friction at high speeds being more dangerous ditto, lower gravity and different size of the world would affect targeting, submerging mechanism of submarines, etc. Highstorms would make airfields and air carriers impractical. IMHO, just plopping earth military on Roshar without extensive prior study and significant adjustments would be a recipe for disaster. Portable firearms would be the only weapons to reliably work and soldiers would need to lug all their supplies themselves. Pretty sure that primitive firearms and cannon would be more dangerous to their users on Roshar than to their opponents, due to increased tendency to explode. I'd say that even a modern military would have a hard time on Roshar, due to all our technology being optimized for Earth conditions. WWII-period military would almost certainly lose.

IMHO, the problem with this discussion is that the arguments in favor of the earth military pre-suppose cosmere knowledge on the part of the Earthlings and ignore local conditions that would play havoc with our technology - like greater gravity on Elantris, lesser gravity and higher oxygen content on Roschar, ash in the air on pre-Catacendre Scadrial, different magnetospheres on the cosmere worlds coupled with the lack of satellite guidance, etc. Unlimited supply and reinforcements from Earth also seem to be a feature for some reason, which is not how conquests ever worked and would indeed make any resistance futile eventually. Now, if we were playing the old game of an army being unexpectedly sucked into a dimensional rift and stuck on one of the cosmere worlds, this could provide a better frame for debate. Even so: Taldain and the First, probably yes. Roshar would present a number of problems, depending on the initial bridgehead (east or west) and on whether the Radiants are around or not. Gravity/oxygen content, etc. should throw a significant monkey wrench into the more complex earth technologies as well. Threnody, absolutely not, given that literally anything that an army would need to do would infuriate the shades and the Evil is supposed to be even worse. Nalthis should be fairly susceptible, IMHO, since the Lifeless and even the Phantoms aren't anything that modern firearms and explosives can't easily deal with. Unless Vasher manages to throw Nightblood into any and all earth army encampements, Nalthians would be pretty SOL. Scadrial during TLR's tenure would be a hard nut to crack, between the ash, the killing heat on most of the globe, the kandra, the Inquisitors, the Mistborn, not to mention TLR himself and atium. The Second Era would be much easier and the planetary population is very low, to boot. In fact, there should be a lot of uninhabited, but very inhabitable land estate between the 2 poles, so it would be trivial for earthlings to establish bases with nobody the wiser. And Scadrial being very metal-rich, including the rare metals, would make it a very desirable target for conquest. Elantrians have a teleportation Aon that can potentially transport things to another planet, according to a WoB. They can also create things, IIRC. So, they would be able to potentially strike back at Earth and certainly to attack army encampements in a way that can't be countered, as long as they know their locations. Also, higher gravity would affect both sophisticated technology and soldiers. Etc.

Ah, yes. Forgot to mention him, though I was deeply intrigued by him in the first book and rather disappointed by his fading into the background afterwards. In addition to everything else that you mentioned, his ardent is almost certainly a worldhopper and possibly a Ghostblood, judging both by his appearance and by the odd way he had adressed Dalinar back in WoK. This is one of the reasons why I want Azure to become a Windrunner and why I want Ishnah to become more prominent. It is kinda disappointing that both Kaladin's squires and Shallan's followers/her first squire are mostly (ex-)soldier dudes. I also want to see more new Radiants who become so independently of the main characters and, of course, Azure bonding Captain Notum and his subsequent interactions with Syl would be huge fun.

So, let's talk about the latest reading: https://wob.coppermind.net/events/412/#e13628 Quite a few intriguing tidbits here. The biggest, of course, being the confirmation that Lift is part of Cultivation's 3(?)-prongued effort to prepare certain people as her tools. The other 2 being Dalinar and Mr T. We also finally learned Lift's wish - which was essentially to always remain herself. That means that along with all the other stuff, she is immune to the Unmade influence. No wonder that she was able to dive into Thrill-covered areas that even the Fused were afraid to enter during the Battle of Thaylenah! So, what's her "curse"? The other significant revelation, IMHO, is that: And yet, the Nightwatcher is a Bondsmith spren, who bonded to humans in the past. But it also could be a hint that she is ultimately intended to bond with a non-human, though the singers PoVs have not been different enough from human ones, for my liking. Also, Rock is apparently no longer at Urithiru, with his daughter taking over the Lift-abetting duties, so maybe an expedition to the Horneater Peaks will play a major role in RoW, after all? Wyndle is back to his chair-obssession, it seems, and he is making shows for "the others". Who are they? Is he communicating with the other cultivationspren in Shadesmar or does he mean the other bonded Radiant spren? The whole inconsistency of bonded Nahel spren partly existing in the Cognitive Realm unless they are summoned as a blade, yet being able to hide from each other, the singers and Lift, who should be capable of seeing into the Cognitive even better than the singers, really bugs me. I hope that the logic and the limitations of how this all works will get explained in RoW. Finally, the flute. "An old flute that Wyndle said _looked strange to him_." Is it a hint that the flute is indeed

Azure, Zahel, Rlain, Ishnah, Sigzil, Skybreaker Master Ki, Palona.

What instability are you talking about and on what grounds do you insist that he was acting without supervision? Why? Helaran didn't do anything that Skybreakers would consider punisheable. Killing somebody on the field of battle, if you are fighting for the other side is A-OK with them. This is not the same as cutting somebody's throat without a warrant like with Gawx. I am also not sure that comparison with Kabsal holds water, as he wasn't given priceless relics so that he could do things on his own initiative. There are valid questions to be asked about Helaran - like could he have truly been unaware of his mother's connections? Was the fact that he was the one who encouraged Shallan to draw again really coincidental? Is it possible that while he sought out whatever secret organization he belonged to because he was looking for justice for his mother, that he then stayed with them to shield Shallan? I do find it very interesting that Taravangian theorised that Heleran may have been the one to _train_ Shallan as a surgebinder, for example. Etc. But none of his actions that he know of preclude him from having been an aspiring Skybreaker or Skybreaker-adjacent.

Karger, it seems that much of the confusion in this discussion comes from you mixing up 2 related, but not interchangeable concepts - namely manufacturing, which is often used as a synonym for "producing" and "making" and manufactory. Manufactories were basically factories in that every worker only performed a few specialized steps in the production process. As such, they were much more efficient than individual artisans and were precursors for factories. Also, the workers could be quickly and easily trained. And it is true that manufactories existed during the peak of the Roman Empire, for example, but never made the jump towards mechanization at that time, as they did during the early modern times, both because slaves were cheap and because other technologies needed for machines to function, like metallurgy, just weren't where they needed to be. However, fabrial science on Roshar is going to fill most of the the technological advance requirements needed for mechanization. They are not doing it in the same way. The only thing that they are probably lacking are powered machines. Fabrial science is poised to create those, if they don't already exist. Among other things, heat fabrials could be also used to power a steam engine, for instance. I also don't understand your repeated insistence that lower classes must have ownership of machines for it to truly count as an Industrial Revolution, because it wasn't at all the case iRL. Also, literacy was not nearly as ubiquitious as you seem to think - plenty of British soldiers during the WWI were still illiterate, for instance. Anyway, it would be logical for people to become aware of the possibility of cosmere travel during the later SA, but it would be like the idea of travel along the Silk Road was for the Renaissance Europeans, IMHO. I.e. something that the educated knew about, but only a very few ever attempted. Rosharans are in some ways severely disadvantaged where cosmere travel is concerned - they are used to higher-oxygen, lower gravity world (70% of Earth normal, IIRC), where stormlight suppresses most infectious diseases. The Radiants could deal with it, if they figure out how to transport stormlight (infused gems in air-tight aluminium containers, IMHO) or how to substitute other investiture, but it would be hard for normal Rosharans to survive. Though not impossible, if Mraize is any guide. Cosmere travel _should_ be well-known on the era 3 Scadrial, but I have a feeling that Sanderson is going to treat it "Men in Black"-style, because he wants to keep the series mutually independent for as long as possible. It would be somewhat contrived, IMHO, particularly since I feel that it would be logical for the Iriali to migrate there between the 2 SA sub-series, and also because you'd think that an intrepid Scadrian world-hopping explorer would want to put their story in print. They seem to be keeping the knowledge secret on Nalthis as well, despite having customs at the perpendicularity. Maybe there is some exclusive trading guild that is jealously guarding it's monopoly? I'd dearly love to read a Sanderson story about somebody first discovering the world-hopping for themselves...

Yes, but Dalinar still was able to swear the 2nd Oath, which the Stormfather was forced to accept. This happened shortly before he unbound his deadblade in WoR chapter 89, BTW, not after as you claim. That's much more than just "interested". They progressed quite far while still bonded to their deadblades - Ehlokar would have successfully sworn the First Oath and Timbre transitioned into the physical realm for Eshonai, despite the fact that the latter also had a voidspren in her gemheart as an additional complication. As an aside, I wonder if Eshonai's last flashback in RoW is going to be her death scene and we'll see her throw off Odium's mind control and Timbre come over for her, just a little too late to save her. While deadblades may have slowed down their progression to Radiancy, I was refuting the suggestion that somebody being bound to one would _prevent_ them from ever attracting and starting to bond a Radiant spren, which is plainly not the case with some Orders. I am not sure what you mean by "half-trained". In Shallan's flashbacks it is implied that Helaran was a good swordsman and he had a couple of years to learn to use the shards, given the timing of his encounter with Lin when Shallan first saw his shardblade. It should have been more than sufficient to take out a shardless Amaram on the battlefield. Don't forget that as far as we know, the Skybreakers didn't send a full knight after Tien, who, of course, was also killed in battle, either. In fact, a normal shardbearer should have been enough even to take out a budding Radiant of most Orders in the early stages of attracting a spren, just not a Windrunner, but then, nobody thought it possible that the honorspren would bond again. What indeed? I suspect that we'll be given an answer in RoW or maybe book 5. IMHO, the Skybreakers then have to resort to indirect methods and while they can't commission an assassination directly, they likely manipulate their target into the way of one (or more). It also may have taken the spren interested in bonding that long to figure out that they need to pick bondmates of high enough standing to keep them safer from the Skybreakers, too. From what we have seen of Nahel spren in Shadesmar, their understanding of humans and their societies seems to be rather limited. It is not at all. But the Ghostbloods could have killed Amaram in any number of ways. There was zero reason to give somebody highly valuable shards to do so on a battlefield and even less to let Amaram live for more than a year and keep such items after the attempt failed. Remember how the Ghostbloods wanted the comparatively less valuable marble-producing soulcaster back from the Davars? It does fit with the constraints that the Skybreakers have to work under, though, and Amaram's activities made him a valid target for them. I also have a hard time imagining Helaran joining the same organization as his hated father.