Isilel

Yea, I don't see common people having domestic appliance fabrials in a near future. Things will develop similar to how they did iRL, IMHO - i.e. industrial and business use first. Heating fabrial require big rubies, which are both expensive and need to be guarded against theft, so I don't see them in homes, other than those of the powerful and the wealthy. But, in the public baths or in a large laundry establishment? Yes, absolutely. They won't. Railways or roads suitable for high-speed ground transport aren't feasible in eastern Roshar because of the highstorms. But Navani already has ideas about flying ships, which would allow them to circumvent this limitation. Yes, and flying ships - or to begin with even barges floating about a foot above the ground and towed by humans would replace and quickly exceed the use that they got out of parshmen as beasts of burden.

I am not sure what you are alluding to. Additionally, we know that "modern" artifabrians have already invented a number of impressive new fabrials, but still can't produce any functioning soulcasters. There is zero indications that the Ghostbloods can, though they'd be well placed to find any lost artifacts. But why the Davars? It isn't like Shallan was the only budding Lightweaver on Roshar. Why would Ghostbloods would have fixated on her and not, say, Tien, who would have been much easier for them to acquire. And why the Unmade? Cosmere is not WoT, after all - while some things can be foreseen, they are just likelyhoods, rather than something rigidly predetermined. Shallan is important, sure, but she is not one true savior of their world - if the Ghostbloods had managed to get to any other incipient surgebinder before the Skybreakers did, they could have had one at their disposal long before Shallan regained her powers. And I don't think that they needed to go so far into the left field to have a spy among the nobility - on the copntrary, it is likely that they have many. For instance, Highprince Hatham may be associated with Ghostbloods, and if not he personally, then his obviously outworlder ardent almost certainly is. I don't remember Mraize hinting that he was particularly interested in Helaran - the Diagrammists at some point theorised that Helaran may have trained Shallan, for some reason. But that was after Shallan burst into prominence at the Shattered Plains, IIRC. But still very weird, if the Ghostblood information about him was correct. Thank you! So, this is settled from the horse's mouth - soulcasters are _very rare_ in Jah Keved and marble sells _at a premium_ - i.e. it is economically profitable to produce it, even via soulcasting and with quarrying and transport costs added. How large a number? Given that soulcasters are _very rare_ in Jah Keved and even rarer the farther west you go. Didn't Toh mention that they have none in Rira? I don't understand what you arguing here. The fact is, that despite Roshar being a hub of lively inter-world activity, the firearms have not been replicated so far. And a Rosharan attacked with a firearm would not know what hit them. And offworlder certainly could use them to advantage, provided there weren't too many witnesses around. A lot of magics also work perfectly normally off-world - the Metallic Arts, the Awakening, etc. Conveniently, the former don't require any foreign investiture and with the latter you can recover all of it back after use, if you are careful and don't make any Lifeless or Type IV Biochromatic entities. And both have lots of interesting applications, both in and outside of combat.

IMHO, it is fairly likely that the Rathalas revelation will cause conflict with his sons - not sure if they are "main" enough for the purpose of this discussion. I also think that Dalinar will butt heads with Jasnah and Kaladin, though not necessarily about this. It is important to realise that pretty much everybody already believed that Dalinar burned Rathalas on purpose. The whole "accidental fire" explanation was just a fig leaf that nobody took seriously. The additional wrinkle of Evi getting caught in the conflagration isn't going to significantly change most people's opinion of him. Nah, this wouldn't make sense. Windrunners can't lead the Radiants, too many Orders are at cross purposes to them. It takes the Bondsmiths to keep all the disparate Order philosophies from deadlocking the Radiants into uselessness and to get them pointed more or less in the same direction - as we saw during the all-Radiant discussion in OB, where Jasnah and Kaladin immediately locked horns. Not to mention that Kaladin himself is far too inexperienced, idealistic and prone to run off on missions to be a decent candidate for overall leadership. In fact, this last feature of his makes me wonder how good he'd be at leading the Windrunners, once their membership diversifies a bit. He was already neglecting a lot of necessary organizational work as a captain in WoR and OB, which Teft, Sigzil, etc. had to haphazardly make up for. I guess we'll see him learning to deal with all these new responsibilities and evolve beyond the "squad leader" mindset in the upcoming books.

They couldn't afford to do it, because they couldn't publicly admit that their father was dead, not necessarily because they couldn't scrape together the money, IIRC. They also lived relatively close to some city, because Jushu was going there to gamble. So the soulcaster ardent didn't have that far to travel. Or maybe they were themselves supposed to bring the body to the temple? This last actually makes more sense to me than sending out ardents with valuable artefacts to tempt the robbers or sending them out under enough escort for security. Did we learn what happened with Rillir Roshone's body? Or Wistiow's? I don't remember. Lin Davar was one of the 4 most significant men after the Highprince in his princedom, while the Hearthstone nobles were less important, IIRC, so it would be interesting to learn where the cut-off for this funerary practice happens. For that matter, would it have been done for his spouses or children? I somehow doubt that late Lady Davar, with her burned-out eyes was paraded before strangers in this way. I very much disagree with this. Both technology and magic from other cosmere planets would give them a wide variety of applications, from spying and stealing to quickly amassing riches. And it seems to me that firearams would shatter shardplate quite nicely, if they hit the same section of it a couple of times. Nor how many of them still function at full capacity. Kaza's soulcaster, after all, was supposed to have 3 modes, of which only one worked. They did have a member in place to babysit him, but yes. Which is very interesting in itself, since unlike some other household staff, Shallan didn't think about Luesh as a newcomer. So, this tatooed Ghostblood member (not a freelancer like Tyn!) was apparently placed in the Davar household years ago, for some reason? Before Lin had gone on his spending spree and they managed to secure his cooperation as a result? OTOH, I don't think that a marble-producing soulcaster would have been quite as valuable to Ghostbloods as to it was to normal Rosharans. They certainly have better ways to get rich quick than to set up such an operation. Not only that, but according to a WoB, the Davars also somehow attracted the special attention of an Unmade, to whose influence Lin succumbed, while his children were still putting up a struggle - likely due to Shallan's interventions. Wouldn't we all like to know why this relatively insignificant family somehow became a confluence of all these disparate interests? Was it just their location? Is something hidden on their lands that all these parties wanted? Or what? You'd think that they'd be able to find more suitable people for this than Lin Davar. He really wasn't a hot prospect as a political figurehead. Here is to hoping that the Davar boys getting reunited with Shallan will give us an opportunity to learn WTH was going on with this family.

The problem here is that Sazed is opposed to hemalurgy even as of the 2nd Era, so why would he have done this? Also, the WoBs on whether spike-conferred Metallic Arts can be inherited are contradictory, with the newer ones leaning towards "no". And, of course, Sanderson always stresses in the WoBs how evil spiking somebody is and how it has bad consequences for the spikee's soul, which I personally find rather frustrating, because I don't see why with medallion or ettmetall-mediated healing spiking can't become something akin to donating a kidney or even the bone marrow. I.e. not something to be done casually, but still very worthwhile. Both to preserve and spread Metallic Arts and to allow the birth of new kandra. Frankly, I am somewhat perplexed why, when Harmony was remaking the surviving northeners anyway, he didn't make most of them into Ferrings. I mean, I see why making everybody an allomancer would have been frought, because it would have further unbalanced the Preservation-Ruin equation, but Feruchemy is neutral and it would have been very fitting for the Scadrians, created exclusively by these two Shards, to have it innately. And while Full Feruchemy is over-powerful and could have inhibited technological development, having just one power apiece not only wouldn't have had this effect, but likely would have jump-started the very line of inquiry that Harmony wanted them to follow. After all, the southeners also didn't arrive at their Metallic Arts magitech organically - Kelsier, who was a demigod at this point, just handed it's basic principles over to them. As to Allomancy, Sanderson could have just written that for people who have genes for both it and Feruchemy, Allomancy is normally dominant and supresses Feruchemy. Except for the rare flukes who become the Twinborn. Oh, well...

It would depend on the circumstances - Kaza wasn't turning things into smoke 24/7. During Dalinar's campaign against the Herdazians he had only one soulcaster, which he held in reserve and actually mainly provisioned his army in conventional ways - which he specifically noted in his PoV. Veden kings may have wanted to keep prices on certain things high and demanded a healthy fee for the use of their soulcasters. Asking for a soulcaster to come to you may not have been all that feasible unless you lived in the capital - because they'd have needed to be payed for the inconveience, they'd have needed security escorts that also cost money, etc. And a king might not have agreed to it all, preferring the prestige of people coming to him. There is just one soulcaster in the whole of Azir, though, which can only make bronze, and as for Jah Keved, it is anybody's guess. IMHO, it is very likely that Alethkar has so many soulcasters because Sadees the Sunmaker looted them from the peoples he conquered - which would suggest that the Vedens have significantly fewer of them. It also fits well with the the fact that Jah Keved was a proper kingdom throughout, whereas Alethkar consisted of constantly warring princedoms since Sunmaker's day. Their many soulcasters were what allowed them to continue like that for so long without becoming brutally poor. We have no clue how many topaz-using soulcasters there are in Jah Keved and if any of them can produce marble. The fact that mining natural marble is profitable suggests to me that there is a healthy demand for it. I am sure that Veden king had healthy stockpiles for his soulcasters. There is little reason to think that this would have made topazes - which aren't even the most valuable gemstones, super-rare or super-expensive. It is about as "silly" as investing money into producing anything at all, by whatever means. Obviously, the quantity of marble that can be produced sells for more than the topazes expended, even after taking the actual quarrying and transportation into account. I am sure that no having to pay the royal soulcasting fee helps too. Supply and demand. We saw no evidence of the gem hoarding you suggest. And looking at the "ten essenses" table the topazes are only good for soulcasting something into "rock and stone". But the polestones themselves can't be made through soulcasting, so what is there that would be so much more worthwhile than marble to make with them?

Except, didn't we see Sel many thousands of years after Odium's attack? It could have been pretty apocalyptic there for a while, after he killed the resident Shards. Just because they ultimately survived doesn't mean that it wasn't a close escape. And on Roshar, Odium was forced to Invest more heavily and also who knows how comprehensive destruction of the splinters of Honor and Cultivation would affect the ecosystem, since they are involved on a more intrinsic level in it's functioning than the Shards usually are? As to Odium's use of pawns, unlike Ruin, his very Intent requires sentience. I do suspect that the intent of Desolations was never a military victory on his part, but something else. He has fooled the Fused and the singers/parsh for all this time. As an aside, it is a bit of a missed opportunity, IMHO, that all of the Cosmere planets except for Roshar and First of the Sun have modern-Earth like feel. There were so many interesting and bizarre creatures in our own paleonotological record, even during the post-dinosaur period - wouldn't it have been more interesting if some of them had survived and flourished on Yolen and other pre-Shattering planets? After all, Yolen had the Sho-Del and intelligent dragons, so the more exotic animals should have been at home there too.

I expect dozens of new Radiants, though a lot of them under the 3rd Ideal, and over a hundred squires, mostly the Windrunner ones, of course. In fact, we don't currently know when the other Orders can get squires - it very well could be only after their 4th Ideal, as is the case with the Skybreakers. IMHO, the 1 year skip is mainly for them to become somewhat skilled with their surges without it feeling too cheap. Jasnah will have trained Shallan and maybe others in Soulcasting. The new Radiants will be mainly from the Orders that we know have been already trying to bond previously - the Lightweavers, the Edgedancers, the Truthwatchers, and now also the Windrunners, though I expect that most of those last will come from around Kaladin and Dalinar. OTOH, I also really fancy Vivenna/Azure as one of them, with Captain Notum as her spren. There is a WoB that we'll see more Dustbringers in book 4 and it is a popular theory that the escape artist Herdazian general is one. The Skybreakers and particularly Nale would have to spend the year in some kind of limbo so as not to deliver the final blow to Dalinar's faction and kill Our Heroes at the behest of the Fused during that period. Not sure how Sanderson will play it - "reconciling their oaths" would take that long? Sounds contrived to me, but YMMV. But I also don't see their Order splitting off-screen and book 5 is the Skybreaker book, so they'd have to be kept in the holding pattern somehow. The other Nahel spren will hold back, I feel, and will need to be convinced by one of the main characters formally approaching them in Shadesmar during book 4 or 5. Maya's revival should play into it. I expect massive religious turmoil in all Vorin countries, reformation movements, schisms and so on. Some might have begun to see Dalinar as a religious figure, others as the servant of the Enemy sent to deceive and test them. The camps at the Shattered Plains will be flooded with refugees from southern Alethkar and Jasnah will come up with means to sustain and organize them. Hopefully, also to reform the Alethi society, at least somewhat. There will be some important work done in fabrial science. Fight for Cultivation's Perpendicularly will happen in Rock's novella during that year? I always pegged it for book 4, but this will work too. Ialai might have been able to escape Urithiru with her gem stores, if she moved quickly, while all the Kholins were dealing with the fallout of Thaylenah. It is true that she lost her army and her lands, but she still has her intelligence and assassin network, which could give her some clout if she kept her money. IMHO, she'd try to turn Highprinces Vamah and Thanadal as well as the ardentia and devout Vorins against the Kholins. Shallan will get a little niece or nephew via Balat and his betrothed, whom he either married on the road or after arriving at Urithiru.

Since Eshonai is dead, her flashbacks would show the events as they happened, not as or how she remembered them, so her memorizing or not is irrelevant. We'd get whatever her mother tried to teach her word for word. Ulim told very little to Venli and mislead her when he could, which is why she expected completely different results from the stormform choir during the Battle of Narak. Basically, he only taught her to trap stormspren in gems and ther ritual that she thought would let them destroy the Alethi army, but in reality summoned the Everstorm. Not only the budding Radiants - they need to rescue artifabrians, scholars, artisans. Their one advantage this time around is the much higher technoligical base and the fact that fabrial science was on the cusp of a major creative explosion. This is a completely unprecedented situation, which will, hopefully, mark the transition between reliance on the few super-powered individuals, who can't be everywhere at once, to the non-powered people being able to fend off the Fused (and the voidforms?), too. Also, with the ready availability of uncomplaining, submissive slave labour abruptly drying up, they are very much motivated to design a number of labour-saving devices and means of transport. Stormfather did say that Honor used him the same way that Odium now uses Everstorm, so Dalinar might be able to as well, at some point. A very good point about the Fused - maybe there is a way to hold them off in Shadesmar, before they can reach Roshar and the cycle of unlimited respawn through Everstorm? It would require making alliances with intelligent spren and smoothing over the wounds of the Recreance, though. The stormlight is not the bottleneck, though, not after the highstorms became regular again. The gemstones are the bottleneck. Using them in Soulcaster devices eventually breaks them and it is currently unknown if the Radiants carefully infusing stormlight from them wears them out and breaks them at some point, too. Even the Radiants of the past needed to have a proper agricultural base in Urithiru, rather than rely on Soulcasting and Regrowth. Which is why Alethkar-in-exile can't stay in Urithiru, but has to move back where they can grow at least some of their food naturally. We can trust Sebarial on this, IMHO, he knows his stuff. Why would Rlain be with Kaladin, if he is working on the Listeners, who are on the Shattered Plains? Kaladin will be in Alethkar, according to one of the readings. Not to mention that while Rlain is fluent in Alethi, it is unlikely that he'd pass among the awakened parshmen, who speak it like the natives. Shallan could go either way, though personally, I find her infiltration routine much more boring than her research routine, and I also love her interactions with Jasnah, which is why my personal preference is for her to remain on the Shattered Plains and investigate the Ghostbloods, Stormseat, the Listeners, etc. I also want her to spend time with her brothers on-page, because IMHO coming clean to them will finally help her to accept and reconcile her 4th Truth. For Alethkar, Kaladin, Venli and Lirin seem to be a lock. Moash is a strong candidate for the 4th. 5th is pretty much in the air. Adolin is a Highsprince, yes, but it didn't stop him from going on a mission before and he has an eye for military intelligence and political/administrative goals of the news order imposed by the Fused that Kaladin would miss. It would also fit his hypothetical path of a budding Edgedancer. Also, Shallan as his wife and the more confident Renarin can temporarily hold things together for him back at the home base now. My problem is that it is not just about the long ago pasts. Renarin has insights into the future, often immediate future, so it would feel very contrived to exclude them when they occur. Likewise, it felt very artificial when we learned nothing about Jasnah adventures in Shadesmar and her confrontation with the highspren in OB, after they were teased in WoR, which yes, was in immediate past, but very pertinent to the "present" events. IMHO, it is better to avoid these issues by showing these characters mostly from outside, through other PoVs. It is Sanderson's terminology and approach, though. After what happened to RJ's WoT, he is terrified of the PoV creep and so tries to limit the "main characters" (his words, not mine) to 3, with Adolin evolving into some kind of in-between figure. Personally, I prefer an ensemble cast of about 6 PoVs, with some rotation among them, so that it is not always the same people. Anyway, the problem of Jordan, Martin, etc. wasn't in introducing too many PoVs when it was warranted, but in reluctance to drop them when they have served their purpose or putting them on hiatus when there was nothing substantial for them to do in that part of the plot. That's where the bloat starts, ahem. And yes, you can have important, fleshed-out characters who are not PoVs, but they need to be observed by PoVs for that to happen. Navani is joined at the hip to Dalinar, so that for the most part we can follow her doings through his PoV. She only learned about _one_ voidform, though and only a Herald can cause a Desolation. She caused Everstorm, yes, but she didn't know what she was doing, so I don't see where new cosmere information would come into it. But I am ready to be surprised. Couldn't disagree more, since learning the process of reviving a dead blade would be key to awakening the Sibling and to convincing the reluctant Nahel spren peoples and individuals to ally with humans again. Restoring one cultivationspren is by itself not all that important, but the implications and the potential pay-off would be huge indeed. As you yourself noted, convincing the spren to bond in numbers should be a priority. And if Adolin is Edgedancer matierial, he is going to try to restore Maya regardless of the logical considerations of effort spent versus gain. As Dalinar's first flashback showed, not very. And that's the kind of thing that I expect Fused raids to do routinely, if the Alethi try to take back Alethkar. And yes, of course, the Windrunners can retaliate - though currently the Fused have numerical superiority, that's how civilizations were smashed back to stone age during the Desolations. It didn't work great for the peoples of Roshar back them and there is no reason to think that it would have better results in the present. Archery is currently useless against the attackers with the surge of Gravitation, as both Kaladin's heroics against the Parshendi and the Fused against the Wall Guard proved. Also, while the Fused don't heal as quickly as the Radiants, killing one of them with an arrow would still be very unlikely. Alethi need to learn to make arrows or bolts with explosive tips and to coat them with aluminium to actually significantly hurt/kill the Fused. Windrunners are only faster in the short term - they accelerate better and can pile on more Lashings, but the Fused can maintain their surges endlessly, while the Radiants run out of stormlight. Which would work in their favor during raids, particularly if they time them for long enough after a highstorm that the gems are only weakly charged. As to communication - did you miss that during their conquest of Alethkar the Fused located and confiscated the fabrials first? As long as normal people can't fend them off at least for long enough that Radiant help can arrive, holding productive territory against them in the easy strike range is impossible. Only distance can give enough of a respite from their attentions at the moment. Everstorm does a number on ships that aren't under Odium's protection, though. But yes, trade is crucial, and yes, the anti-Odium side should fully exploit it's technological superiority. They weren't in any position to go into offensive as of end of OB, though. I fully expect a massive technological jump motivated by military neccessities, similar to what happened during WWII, only more so. But they wouldn't be there yet after just a year, IMHO, and they wouldn't have arrived at it off-page. This is fiction, we are going to see crucial inventions being introduced on-page. Neither Radiants nor squires can be replaced easily! First of all, only a 3rd Oath Radiant can have squires, as we have seen with Bridge 4, who only began to glow after Kaladin spoke his 3rd. And the Windrunners have the strongest and most squires - which means that other Orders may get them even later. Among the Skybreakers only the 4th level "masters" have squires, for instance, but we don't know if it is because they can't or because they won't. It takes Radiants time to get there, usually years. And second, both Radiants and squires need experience and training to become skilled with their surges. Are you familiar with the history of French and Russian revolutions? It doesn't take nearly as long as you think.

It would be impossible for Alethi to produce anything on those lands, should they temporarily recapture them, unless they have weapons that let soldiers hold off the Fused. The reason for massive collapses of civilization during the Desolations was that you can't really hold territory against surge-binders. They can pick and chose where to raid and destroy and normal people - either human or singer, can do nothing to stop them, as we have seen with the Wall Guard. As a result, all infrastructure was thoroughly smashed at the end of a Desolation, skills lost (which worked in Fused's favor, because _they_ retained the skills and could teach them to singers again when they returned), etc. And the thing is - there were never enough surge-binders on either side to be able to effectively defend territory. Raiders can pick and chose where to strike and ensure that they always have local numerical superiority. Also, there is a voidform that can tell the future, which might help the Fused plan their attacks even better. No, the Alethi must learn to produce on the Shattered Plains and maybe the Unclaimed Hills, instead of over-extending back into Alethkar. They need to hold the Narak Oathgate anyway and the Fused are busy training the parsh, so the long-distance strikes by them would be relatively few. This is why I think that Jasnah needs to be located on the Shattered Plains and not in Urithiru. They can't feed a whole nation-in-exile via soulcasting, because it would deplete the gemstone reserve, which they also need for their Radiants to be effective, very quickly. We don't know if the gemstones still eventually break if carefully used by the Radiants - Jasnah likely made hers break on purpose when she pretended that she had a Soulcaster back in WoK. But they might. Also, the refugees are going to come to the Shattered Plains and it wouldn't be logistically feasible to bring all of them to Urithiru. Additionally, the remaining Listeners are _also_ on the Shattered Plains and their history is part of the book's focus, so interaction with them should be in the cards. They have a method for growing food in this rather inhospitable area, that the exile Alethi could learn. Which is why I'd put Rlain there as well, rather than in Alethkar, with Kaladin. But rushing into fighting the parshmen would only solidify the racial divide. That's how it was done during Heraldic Epochs and the False Desolation and we know that it is an ultimately losing strategy. It also fosters hatred, which benefits Odium. This time, the anti-Odium side needs to win the hearts and minds of the singers, which likely was made easier by the fact that the parshmen share cultures of the nations that they have lived amongst. I suspect Cultivation's hand in this. Kaladin's, Venli's and Rlain's arcs look to be going in that direction. The Fused are going to employ approaches that worked for them in the past. They are very experienced and skilled, but hopefully less capable of quickly adapting to and inventing new approaches. A lot of them being mad helps too, though they'd still be very dangerous on the battlefield and endless respawn will make up for their lacking mental faculties, IMHO.

Actually, the way I see it, if Nale was involed in the regicide, he started to set things up for it somewhat earlier than that night. After all, Liss, whom I also very much suspect of being a Herald and having had an inkling about what was going to happen that night, said that she sold Szeth a couple of weeks previously. He remained for sale until a spren just happened to lead the Parshendi to him and somehow steered their questioning of him towards him revealing that he had a Honorblade. And yes, Parshendi knew that it was a Honorblade, as Eshonai's PoVs in WoR demonstrate. But Nale also didn't need Gavilar to tell him anything - Sons of Honor likely were on his radar anyway and once he heard about the impending alliance with the Parshendi, he could have just kept in the same general vicinity as Gavilar and sent his spren to spy on him, like Malata did with Dalinar. As I mentioned in my previous post, Jasnah specifically pegged the 2 Heralds as Ehlokar's guests and not her father's. Yet in this prologue "the uncommon figures" were all invited by Gavilar himself. There are continuity issues between what is stated in WoK and what we learn in OB. For instance, according to OB, Gavilar began to think and talk about codes and such a couple of decades before his death, not just a year or 2. And he wanted to confide something very important to Dalinar immediately before the Second Rathalas, which was about 5 years before his death, IIRC. So, I can only assume that he was researching things for at least that long, only he used to hide it better, even from his family, but in the last couple of years he felt that time was growing short and threw caution to the winds. This still doesn't explain how he was able to learn so much so quickly, when Jasnah couldn't. Particularly since Jasnah's scene with her pen-pals showed that she, too, wasn't working alone. It doesn't seem likely to me that Sons of Honor, who pre-dated Gavilar, would have had all the pertinent cosmere knowledge, since it would have destroyed their organization's reason to exist. I can only conclude that Gavilar was also working with the Ghostbloods, or, possibly, but not very likely, other worldhoppers. Yes, they can. Szeth specifically mentions the 2 highspren showing themselves to him after his performance in the tagging game and then that even his own spren only rarely showed itself to him. Gavilar didn't find any other Radiants, nor could he pass laws that would make him look weak or insane in the eyes of his subjects. He was also unaware of Nale's crusade. Additionally, it didn't een occur to Our Heroes that Radiant spren can be used to spy on them. Honestly, I feel like Nahel spren should be able to detect each other and the voidspren and/or Elsecallers and Lightweavers should engage their Shadesmar-vision and sweep for spying spren when exchanging secret information for it to remain secret, but that's neither here nor there. Nale is an expert at playing the "letter of the law" loopholes, as he wouldn't have been able to eliminate the budding Radiants without criminal backgrounds otherwise. He also knew in advance that Parshendi would react with horror to Gavilar's real offer, because he was aware of their history. So, he only made sure that they had the tool capable of killing the king at the moment when the terrible revelation came and emotions ran high. Nothing he did was against the law. He didn't order the assassination himself. Yes. Though, Ulim is red(dish) and not violet-black, IIRC. Somebody also noticed that Szeth hid the other sphere in rural Jah-Keved... and we know that a particular family of rural nobility seemed to have attracted the attentions of an Unmade, for some reason. So, the sphere confided by Gavilar to Szeth may have been hidden on Davar land, and either is the source of the influence or, perhaps, attracted one of the mindless Unmade? Not true. Firearms would make a fairly short work of shardplate, since it can be broken by strong impacts. And Awakening can get them entangled and immobilized for the kill on the battlefield, or get them when they sleep. Not to mention that the resident Shard would not be amused. So, they'd need a minor shardworld without a Shard, but still retaining a stable Perpendicularity, which is a tall order. And if most planets have "Earth-normal" gravity and oxygen-content, the Rosharans would be at a physical disadvantage.

I very much hope that by this point Shallan won't be the only Lightweaver! Not counting Hoid, of course. But we know that the Cryprics are game to bond, so in a year's time there should be at least a few new members. Vathah teaming up with Kaladin could be pretty fun. Shallan's whereabouts would be determined by Sja-Anat's and by the Ghostblood shenangians, I imagine, and there is not much reason to expect the latter to stay put in Kholinar, when Odium could use her to corrupt more Oathgates. IMHO, Venli and Rlain in book 4 will work as a two-pronged effort to lead the parsh away from Odium and the Fused: Venli with the newly awakened parshmen and Rlain with the Parshendi - both the refusniks and the duped stormforms, who are being cannibalized for the use by the Fused. I expect Rlain to eventually become a Bondsmith, but it would probably only happen in book 5, which, according to Sanderson, while a Skybreaker book, will still have a lot of Bondsmith content. I tentatively agree that Jasnah would want to keep Renarin close and he'd want to stay with her, because he trusts her to stop him if Glys does prove to be malignant. But I am not sure that we'll be following them through their own PoVs, because Sanderson is mainly saving them for the second arc. So, we may instead see their doings through Adolin or Shallan. Reviving both spren could be connected - Maya's coming first and serving as proof of concept. Not sure if there'd be a reason to elevate Navani to a PoV for this, though, when we'd be able to see pertinent bits through Dalinar. Anyway, there is Szeth, though according to this WoB, he'll be very much in the background too: So, Urithiru could be Dalinar and Szeth? Or maybe Szeth doesn't count as a PoV, if he just has one Interlude chapter or so. Yes, but I feel that Jasnah and Renarin may "know too much"(tm). I mean, we didn't even learn what happened in her confrontation with the highspren in Shadesmar, which was enticingly teased at the very end of WoR, because the author presumably decided that it would spoil some surprises. Ditto Renarin's visions of possible futures. So, it makes sense to mostly show the 2 of them through somebody else's eyes. Not quite on topic, but isn't this an odd statement? I mean, Venli's PoV in OB doesn't hint at any advanced cosmere knowledge. On the contrary, she was thoroughly blindsided by cosmeric implications and consequences of her actions. I previously thought that whatever new mysteries we are going to learn through book 4 flashbacks would come from Eshonai's and Venli's mother via Listener Songs.

Never thought of it being Cultivation, which is a very plausible idea. Personally, I always believed that he was Tanavast's Cognitive Shadow in disguise. Hoid mentioned that Tanavast used to be a fun person to go drinking with and dream "Nohadon's" ability to enjoy life to the fullest would fit with this. There was always this strange disconnect between the Stormfather being Honor's Cognitive shadow, and the fact that most other Cognitive shadows encountered in the Cosmere are complete personalities, rather than recordings of visions. But of course, the Stormfather already had his own personality and overriding and replacing it would have been unethical and likely contrary to Honor's Intent. So, it makes sense to me that he would have hidden his Vessel's Cognitive shadow in the Stormfather's subconsciousness, so that the corresponding Bondsmith could interact with it once they progressed far enough.

This WoB is so very odd! Why would Gavilar be so interested in getting a Surgebinder off Roshar?! He himself was a proto-Bondsmith, but he didn't even progress as far along the path to Radiancy as his son eventually did, since he wasn't infusing stormlight in his death scene. And it was dark, so there was no way for Szeth or even Jasnah looking from above to miss it, if Gavilar started to glow. Also, Aesudan claimed in chapter 84 of OB that: So, as far as she knew - and she seemed to have been involved in whatever Gavilar was doing to some degree, he never found any other budding Radiants. Nor did he or his associates notice Jasnah becoming one, despite her shadow doing funky things for a few months before Ivory confronted her on that fateful night. I don't see Gavilar planning another exodus of humans, because it isn't like uninhabited worlds with perpendicularities to enter them and everything humans need to live on them are a dime a dozen. Not to mention that unlike the flight from Ashyn, they'd have to go far out-system even if this perfect place exists, which is not likely. Nor would they have needed to bring bonded Radiant spren off Roshar for this, not to mention that they didn't have any at the time. So, what was he trying to accomplish with this? Not starting a False(?) Desolation, because you'd think that bringing spren from Braize and releasing Bo-Ado-Mishram would be enough for that. And I do think that starting one was on his agenda too - not to return the Heralds or to achieve the triumph of Vorinism, but so that Rosharans would become aware of their danger and be very motivated to prepare for the Final Desolation that Honor's visions told him was coming. A vaccination, of sorts. Could Gavilar have been thinking about shipping the Unmade, other than BAM, out of Rosharan system, to tilt the odds in humans' favor during the Final Desolation? Or, after his seeming failure to find/create any Radiants, did he conclude that 2 millenia ago not every old Radiant committed Recreance, that some of them may have gone off-world and taken their spren with them? That these spren would be more amenable to bonding again? And his experiments with voidspren-napping from Braize are "proof" of this having been possible? But then, you'd think that if Gavilar had agents visiting Braize(!), he'd have had them approach various Nahel spren peoples directly and would have learned that the Truthwatcher spren, Cryptics and Cultivationspren at least were open to the idea of bonding. And that Nale and his merry followers kept killing any human who dared to try. The Heralds role in all of this - I am quite certain that Nale _didn't_ truly team up with Gavilar. This goes against everything he believed in prior to the climax of "Edgedancer". But Kalak might have. IIRC, Sanderson said somewhere that the Heralds could subconsciously sense that the Desolation was coming, even those in deep denial. And from what we have seen of Kalak he'd want to run away if he possibly could - which this research would have helped him with, because Heralds have the same problems with leaving Rosharan system that the spren do. But, if this was the case then, IMHO, Nale became interested in Gavilar's doings and bullied Kalak into bringing him into it and then convinced him that Gavilar was wrong and needed to die. That is, if the 2 Heralds were the ones having the conversation with Gavilar that Navani eavesdropped on in this prologue. In WoR prologue, from Jasnah's PoV, Kalak said: which very strongly suggests to me that the Heralds had something to do with Szeth and the king's assassination. There is also this interesting detail: As far as Jasnah knew, it wasn't Gavilar himself, but _Ehlokar_ who invited the Heralds to the feast. And as somebody who was running security checks of all the people invited, she should know. They were also shown chatting with him when Szeth left the feasting hall to begin his murdering in WoK prologue. So, there is a good reason to doubt that they are the people that Gavilar is talking with in this reading. Particularly since from Eshonai's prologue in OB we also learned that Gavilar felt that somebody was watching him. Which very likely was Nale's highspren. Nale didn't really need to get close to Gavilar to find out what he was doing - he or another full Skybreaker just needed to be in the vicinity and have their spren run the surveillance, like Malata does in OB.

Sorry, posted in the wrong thread. But since I am here - IMHO, it makes no sense for Alethi in exile to attack Alethkar until they figure out how to stop or at least significantly slow the Fused re-incarnation carroussel. And they need to develop fabrial weapons that would give even normal soldiers a chance against the Fused. The Radiants are very much outnumbered and not properly trained, after all, and even back in the day when this wasn't the case, they couldn't protect civilization against being thoroughly trashed during the Desolations. In order to prevail, this time the anti-Odium side needs to employ new strategies, since Radiants against the Fused with everybody else being cannon fodder didn't really work out in the past.

This is all very intriguing. It sure sounds like Gavilar is talking about taking bonded spren off-world, but he never managed to really bond with the Stormfather himself, nor to find any other budding Radiants? Ironically, given that Jasnah was becoming one under his ery nose. IIRC, Braize is also described as dangerous in Arcanum Unbounded, so it is rather odd that humans managed to travel there and back through Shadesmar without getting murdered by the Odium spren. Might he have been talking about dead shardblades, maybe? There is a WoB that they hadn't been ever taken to another major shardworld, and maybe Gavilar wanted to do so, for some reason? To trade them for something, maybe?* *Scratch that. Re-reading the passage it does seem that he is talking about taking the voidspren from Braize. But if the black spheres are the result of such spren-napping, why is it not "enough"? They are on Roshar, aren't they? Did Gavilar want to take them to the worlds outside of his star system? And this: "The connection is not severed but can be warped to allow for travel." does suggest the mechanism for taking the Radiant spren off-world. Which, I am sure, we will eventually see. And was the king talking to Nale and Kalak, who were also called "ambassadors from the west" in the WoR prologue from Jasnah's PoV? Which would be quite strange, because there they were at the very least aware of and complicit in the impending/on-going assassination, if not actively involved. Did Gavilar know who he was speaking to, but was misled as to their motives? Did they infiltrate his organization without him being the wiser, in order to better hinder him? Or were the Heralds trailing and spying on some genuine associates of Gavilar from the west with whom he was talking in this scene? Or, maybe Kalak started to work with Gavilar and then got cold feet and informed Nale? Or Nale found out, inserted himself into proceedings and did what he could to stop Gavilar? I mean, from this dialog it is very clear that he would have wanted to squash this endeavour ASAP. Are all those celebrated scholars and artifabrians now trapped in the occupied Alethkar? Our Heroes really need to get hold of them! All in all, it seems that Gavilar's real goals were more complex than what Amaram thought they were. I somehow don't think that supremacy of Vorinism was really on the king's agenda. I am also very curious why he chose to involve Amaram and Aesudan - though, again, apparently not as deeply as they believed, but not Navani and Jasnah?

This is all very intriguing. It sure sounds like Gavilar is talking about taking bonded spren off-world, but he never managed to really bond with the Stormfather himself, nor to find any other budding Radiants? Ironically, given that Jasnah was becoming one under his ery nose. IIRC, Braize is also described as dangerous in Arcanum Unbounded, so it is rather odd that humans managed to travel there and back through Shadesmar without getting murdered by the Odium spren. Might he have been talking about dead shardblades, maybe? There is a WoB that they hadn't been ever taken to another major shardworld, and maybe Gavilar wanted to do so, for some reason? To trade them for something, maybe? And was he talking to Nale and Kalak, who were also called "ambassadors from the west" in the WoR prologue from Jasnah's PoV? Which would be quite strange, because there they were at the very least aware of and complicit in the impending/on-going assassination, if not actively involved. Did Gavilar know who he was speaking to, but was misled as to their motives? Did they infiltrate his organization without him being the wiser, in order to better hinder him? Or were the Heralds trailing and spying on some genuine associates of Gavilar from the west with whom he was talking in this scene? And are all those celebrated scholars and artifabrians now trapped in the occupied Alethkar? Our Heroes really need to get hold of them! All in all, it seems that Gavilar's real goals were more complex than what Amaram thought they were. I somehow don't think that supremacy of Vorinism was really on the king's agenda. I am also very curious why he chose to involve Amaram and Aesudan - though, again, apparently not as deeply as they believed, but not Navani and Jasnah?

We have seen that, spoiler: OTOH, I remember a WoB that Heralds are bound to the Greater Roshar system and none of them ever left it. So, it may or may not be technically possible for them. There is also this WoB, however: So, some people clearly discovered how to export spren to other planets in the past.

IMHO, it was almost certainly a different kind of spren. The highspren seem to have bought Nale's party line hook and sinker so none of them would have been warning people about a Desolation that they themselves didn't believe was coming, and they are also rigidly organized, so I really don't see one of them haring off to bond a person not vetted and tested by the Skybreakers. Szeth's ordeal probably changed him a lot, too, and according to the Ghostblood letter, Nale liked to snap up people close to bonding other spren and somehow induct them into the Skybreakers instead. Like many political and religious elites historically, the Stone Shamans seem to have special rules for themselves and the relics they guard. It was heavily hinted in SA that Szeth used to be one of them himself and OB thankfully confirms what many suspected - that he trained with and been awarded the Honorblade when he was still a respected member of Shin society. I guess that there is a sacred tradition that custodianship of a Honorblade is for life, so they felt that they couldn't take it away from Szeth even after they named him Truthless. When that Shin farmer told Vstim that their society could hardly afford another one like Szeth, this is, retroactively looking, likely what he truly meant, IMHO. There is also this juicy recent WoB:

It makes no sense to me for Jasnah to be at liberty to run off on some quest. I hope that Sanderson is too good a writer to completely ignore the implications of her becoming the queen of a nation in exile, having to deal with waves of refugees and pushing through some very necessary reforms of Alethi society in the face of religious and political opposition. For this reason I also don't see her remaining at Urithiru - until somebody figures out how to turn it on and make it self-sustaining, living there is a constant drain on the limited and ever-dwindling gem reserve. Sebarial was right about the need to return to the Shattered Plains, where they'd have a better chance of feeding the people and producing the other necessary stuff without having to constantly resort to soulcasting. Humans fleeing from the southern Alethi princedoms are going to come there. They'll need to be protected from the Fused. There are the Ghostbloods. And, of course, there are still the remnants of the Listeners somewhere around too for her to eventually deal/interact with. Jasnah herself may or may not be one of the PoVs, but we need somebody to provide a window on her doings. Not sure what group she would belong to, but there is a lot of story to be had at the Shattered Plains. This could be group 2, maybe? I'd have said group 1, because there is a lot to do there, but Venli is in Kholinar and it seems that group 2 won't have any PoVs during the "Avalanche" section, which would be odd for the focus character of a given book. But maybe she dies along the way? Dalinar will mainly stay at Urithiru, which would also help to divorce him and the Radiants in general from Alethkar in the minds of other nations, even though I expect that a couple of Windrunner "bridges" are going to be stationed at the Shattered Plains at all times, to protect the people there from the raids by the Fused. Dalinar and Navani are going to do politics and try to figure out how to turn Urithiru back on. Inventing weapons that would allow normal people to fend off the Fused is likely to be on the agenda as well. Navani may or may not have a PoV and I expect at least one attempt to steal back the Thrill in it's gem or to destroy the gem to free it by the Odium's side. Group 3? And it seems like the bulk of the characters are going to be back at Alethkar, since Venli and Kaladin are already there from the readings. And so was Sja-Anat the last we saw her. I used to think that Rock's return to the Horneater peaks would be a major plot arc for Kaladin in the book 4, but with the news about his impending novella and what Sanderson told us about the PoV groupings, this doesn't make much sense anymore.

To be fair, I thought that the Coinshots were oddly and impausibly useless and that they should have been able to use the "Mistborn roads" when I first read the first Mistborn trilogy, so I was kinda glad to see the ability used logically in the second one . In fact, the opponent allomancer teams in first Mistborn just weren't sufficiently skilled, full-stop. I now rationalize it with the fact that both Kelsier and Vin had to become very coordinated and used to making split-second decisions in order to survive and very successfully leveraged these pre-existing abilities as Mistborn. Whereas the enemy were nearly always "gentlemen-allomancers" who lacked both motivation and experience to truly plumb their abilities. The Coinshots in particular would have needed much more training to do what Wax does, because they couldnt protect themselves from or minimize the results of their mistakes by burning Iron and Pewter. But if they had dared to move around like the Mistborn did (and Wax does), in order to accumulate that experience, they would have immediately become targets for the Mistborn from the rival families. So, it wasn't deemed worthwhile for them to invest the hard work into developing these skills. What I found disappointing in the Second Mistborn series and still do, somewhat, despite loving it otherwise, is the low percentage of Metalborn and Our Heroes of course being those lucky enough to be born with super-rare abilities yet again. I see the logic, both in and out-of-world for splitting the abilities so that only Mistings and Ferrings exist and agree with it. But I really don't understand why Harmony didn't make everybody a Ferring when he remade them, with a percentage still being born a legacy allomancer, or very occasionally, a Twinborn. IMHO, a setting where everybody has magical abilities and it is really mostly up to inventiveness and skill of the protagonists with what they have, rather than a rare inborn gift, would have been refreshing. And there still would have been sufficient incentive for certain developments.

As has been already mentioned, he can heal, but he also can fly, after a fashion. He is a , after all. His Cryptic will give him soulcasting as well. As far as I can see the one other Order whose power-set might have been interesting to him and whose Oaths are bound to be rather flexible are the Willshapers. Transportation could have been extremely useful to any worldhopper, but is invaluable to one who can power it with the investiture that is readily available to them, as Hoid doubtlessly can. However, he also seems to aim for getting magic from as many Shards as possible, so he needs to ration his spirit-web, maybe. How much powers can he stuff in it, before it breaks apart like a rotten cloth? Also, it is possible that adoption of an "orphaned", just transferred to the physical spren, which couldn't afford to be too choosy was the only situation where he could form a Nahel bond at all. As to why he wouldn't just nab one of the Honorblades - maybe he knows that they are needed on Roshar to fight Odium? Or maybe because unlike the Nahel spren, who are all, with a possible exception of the Stormfather, a mix of Honor and Cultivation, the honorblades were of Honor alone.

So, both of you guys are ignoring the obvious source of gems needed to fuel the Industrial Revolution - mining. After all, what happened to all the _previous_ generations of chasmfiends? Where are their gemhearts now? We have seen in the Kaza interlude lots and lots of large gemstones just lying around on Aimia, which is rather odd, because shouldn't they be covered by crem? And in other parts of Roshar they likely are. I imagine that Rosharans will figure out a way to scout such deposits from Shadesmar and mine them in the physical world. And yea, given the Urithiru pillar as an example, experiments with melting gemstones to try to make bigger ones artificially are sure to follow. That's not to say that breeding animals producing gemhearts is out of the question either - I strongly suspect that it was a part of why the ancient Radiants were associated with larkins/lanceryn. Of course, lanceryn were valuable for a number of reasons, but it wouldn't be surprised if providing a steady supply of large gemhearts was one of them. Gunpowder would be that much more dangerous to work with on Roshar, though, and I doubt that it could be used to produce firearms. And also, the most belligerent and martial cultures were until now deeply invested in their hierarchical structures and shard supremacy, so they probably wouldn't even have looked into something that allowed the plebes so much easy destructive potential. After all, we have iRL examples of cultures turning away from technological and military advances because they felt that those would destroy the status quo - China, Japan, etc., so this is quite realistic. Anyway, I suspect that gunpowder is going to make an appearance in SA, as an explosive only, and one of the few things that would allow normal people to hurt the Fused. Heralds versus the Fused failed and Radiants versus the Fused failed, because neither could have been everywhere at once and it is much more difficult to effectively defend a large territory and infrastructure than to attack it. Only if the normal soldiers can hold ground against the Fused, even if it is more like fighting tanks with hand grenades, can the usual civilzation-destroying paradigm of the Desolations be overcome, IMHO. You would have been so dead with the 19th century Western surgery! In some ways, the doctors were more dangerous then than their earlier counterparts, as they had routine opportunites to practice with cadavers, but often didn't wash their hands or instruments before switching to a live patient. Which is why childbed fever, among other things, was such a killer for hospital deliveries. This doctor's story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis is quite eye-opening (and hair-raising!) in that respect. Horrifyingly enough, the principles of aseptics and antiseptics and infectious theory of disease didn't become widespread until the early 20th century - i.e. iRL creation of synthetic gems actually _preceded_ our understanding of principles contained in the "Wisdom of the Heralds", which you say is aimed at "stone-age people". History is funny like that!

Maybe putting a priming cube in a tightly sealed aluminium container would preserve it's charge indefinitely? Perhaps it would be possible to use medallions for either zinc allomancy or feruchemy and/or removing Identity? Yes, you'd need to have people filling in unkeyed metalmind, but it shouldn't be that onerous, with compounding. And even if mental speed decreases lifespan, it still might be worth it, for certain things. After all, bendalloy allomancy does, yet people still use it. But strenuous mental activity causes hunger even iRL, yet it actually helps to prevent mental deteritoriation at advanced ages, so using zinc feruchemy may not be damaging at all. Oh, and gold feruchemy would heal the damage, whereas it couldn't reverse accumulated extra age of burning bendalloy. Now, I wonder if F-steel also causes accelerated aging - logically it should, right? Maybe that's something that would finally limit the apparent OP-ness of a steel compounder... Or even have the same mechanism moving heat from your fridge to your radiator, maybe?

Yes? But it is impossible for me to imagine that a substantial number of Radiants would have refused to fight and defend civilians during the Desolations, when casualties were so very high, the need to kill the Fused as quickly as possible so very urgent, and something that only the Radiants and the Heralds were really capable of doing. No, the Stormfather is quite explicit in the chapter 38 of Oathbringer "The Broken People" that Taln was : By the process of elimination, Chana is the Herald who could have only been a general. Well, Jezrien could have been a king and a general both, I suppose, but there never was any hint of Chana having been royal or a scholar so only a general remains as the option for her. Her being famous for her athletism - the swiftest runner, etc. also fits with this. Yes, she is associated with "the Guard" in Vorinism, but her Blade's surges put her more in "artillery" department, I'd say. The only Herald who could have been a simple personal guard in his prior life is Taln himself, which would explain how he could have had an opportunity to fall in love with princess Shalash. I hear you about Balat, though it doesn't seem to me like he is necessarily socipathic. In fact, he likely would have quickly escaped the horrible Davar household or gotten the better of Lin in such a case - he was clearly pulling his strikes during their fight, because despite his fury and fear he couldn't bring himself to truly harm his father. But OTOH, I am not really seeing what would qualify Lirin for being a Dustbringer, whereas I see quite a lot, surpisingly, that hints at him plausibly becoming a non-traditional Stoneward. With Redin I see it, and the Herdazian general's escape artist tricks do hint at him having Abrasion. With Lirin there just isn't anything there, except for your laudable desire to rehabilitate the Releasers . IMHO, YMMV.