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I think the people who have been to Shadesmar would assume that the locations correspond to places in Shadesmar.

Can someone remind me - does Jasnah reference her secrets somewhere in the released chapters? (Or did I miss it?) Or are we assuming she knows more because she took an extra trip through Shadesmar? (Probably true, I wouldn't argue)

I don't think it would be the same kind. The way Szeth's resurrection worked was different. Spoilers for Mistborn: Secret History: In cosmere terms, that really doesn't have much to do with how dead spren work, I think.

Heh. I don't think there's a gem big enough! Unless all of Roshar is secretly, under all the crem, a huge gem big enough to trap a Shard...

I guess on Roshar, making your intended emotions authentic enough to draw the appropriate spren is a good skill for a con artist. Or an actor! I bet actors who can actually feel the requisite emotions strongly enough to attract spren are pretty high-status.

Yep, I think that's right. I think the hordelings all together make a hive mind, though - there isn't a central "brain" somewhere, it's just that when you get enough of the hordelings together they're capable of higher thought. (That also makes each Sleepless colony, in a sense, immortal - while individual hordelings grow and die, the whole Sleepless together doesn't seem to. So that's also why they know so much.)

I think by era 3, natural magic is gonna be diluted even further, but technological magic is going to be enhanced. Between eras 1 and 2, we lost Mistborn - the sDNA was diluted, so now there's just ferrings and mistings. I think the same will continue to happen, as mistings and ferrings become even rarer, to the point where we barely have any twinborn, maybe none. On the other hand, technological uses are going to skyrocket. We're seeing the start of this, with the medallions, but it's going to extend from there - there's going to be ways of obtaining powers that someone wasn't born with, and of having machines and devices use the powers.

Oh, I like that even better than having a secret child alter be the "real Shallan!" Nicely done.

Mraize has trophies from basically every magic system we’ve seen. He’s got White Sand, an Aether, an Aviar, a snippet of royal locks, and who knows what else. I don’t think the trophies help narrow things down...

Autonomy continues to meddle everywhere! I love this linguistic connection.

Alternate theory - Ishar was lying all along, he's been with Odium trying to make sure Roshar is unprepared for the Desolation.

I mean, the big difference between Dalinar and Sadeas is the redemption that Dalinar looked for and found and Sadeas did not. It's the theme of Oathbringer. "The most important words a man can say are, “I will do better.”" and ending with . "I, of all people, can change." Dalinar was the perfect picture of a horrible monster, Odium's future champion. Then he changed. Sadeas too had many opportunities to be better. He chose not to take them, until his time ran out.

I think it's more likely that Odium is the big bad of the Stormlight Archive, and something or someone else is the big bad of the Cosmere, if there is one.

He would go to the Nightwatcher after seeing a pitched battle between his adopted family (Bridge Four) and his species (Singers). He would ask to bring them together, to make them stop fighting each other. Cultivation would give him a bond - the power to unite them, as a Bondsmith. With the "cost"/"curse" being the oaths he has to follow. It fits. Might be usurping Dalinar's role a bit, but that's to be expected if there are extra Bondsmiths.

I suspect it has to be a combination of things. If it were "just" a mechanical fabrial that heals shardblades, then spren wouldn't be so angry at all the murders, they would have bonded someone a long time ago to give them instructions on how to build this "Resurrection fabrial". And would be anticlimactic anyway. If it were just a matter of treating the sword well, well, I'm sure there've been plenty of shardholders over the centuries that really took good care of their blades. Didn't do anything for those spren. So I think it's all the above. Adolin has to bond and swear the right oaths to this dead spren. Then that has to be combined with some realmatic magic stuff, maybe from a Bondsmith or maybe from the appropriate fabrial (or both!)

I think they get "knighthood" when they get their own spren - that's when they're no longer dependent on someone else for their powers.

I think lots of people thought Jasnah was dead, because we saw her body and then she didn't save the crew. We had a pretty explicit death scene: Sure, I can understand how people would believe otherwise. I don't know the numbers for how many people did and didn't, but I tend to save the theorizing/overanalyzing for the reread, and on first read I of course accepted what the book was telling me, that Jasnah was dead. I think it's pretty obvious why Shallan thought Jasnah was dead, because she saw her dead body, double-tapped just to be sure.

https://www.tor.com/2014/08/06/stormlight-archive-scene-after-words-of-radiance/ gives a not-quite-canon-but-pretty-close answer.

For me it depends on how big of a role he plays. If he becomes a major player, I would expect that we see some of his character growth. If he continues to be "one of Shallan's interchangeable Lightweaver squires" then I'm fine with the character growth having happened off-screen. We're definitely at the point now where there's lots of Radiants whose names we don't even *know*, and Gaz's had a year between Oathbringer and RoW to improve, so that could have happened. We don't know his Truths, or if he's said any. I definitely don't think Radiant status is given as a reward for being a good person. Dalinar was a radiant before the end of Oathbringer, while he still literally didn't have the memories of what he had done and couldn't take responsibility for it. I think Teft was already a radiant at the point he sold his coat for firemoss? Not sure on that one.

Ooh, Rlain as Nightsmith would also be pretty awesome. And of course if it takes 10 books to get to three bondsmiths, instead of five, then there's plenty of time to introduce totally new characters!

That seems super interesting! Are these going to get transcribed to wob.coppermind.net ? I never end up seeing them but would love to read them

Yeah, we don't know for sure yet. Probably will learn about this in Dragonsteel.

We see that he repels the mists, and we've seen him "talk" to a voice only he can hear. I'm pretty sure that's strong evidence that he's got a spike and is being influenced by Ruin, who is setting up Kelsier to fight TLR.

I can't, even in my own mind, tell whether this is a crempost or a legitimate theory. But hear me out. To fight off Odium, it seems like our heroes would need to complete the order of Bondsmiths - get all three. And man, that would be awesome. Dalinar's bonded the Stormfather. That's one. The Sibling is missing. However, there's a lot of story progress towards finding them. Sibling's somehow connected to Urithiru, which is being investigated. Dalinar's asking questions of the Stormfather. So maybe Navani will be the one to bond the Sibling, since she's interested in fabrials and Urithiru's basically a giant fabrial. It's a reasonable possibility at least, one which wouldn't be totally out of left field. But what about the Nightwatcher? There's been no story progress towards anybody "bonding" the Nightwatcher. She stays in her valley. The main characters mostly stay away from there. And we're running into character limitations - so many main characters already have Spren bonds, and we probably need one prominent character of each Radiant order, and it would feel anticlimactic if some random side character who we've never heard of until now appeared and within half a book became a Bondsmith, so who's even left? It would have to be someone we already know. Someone without a Spren bond. Someone who already has a history with Cultivation, since Cultivation would have to send the Nightwatcher out of the valley to make the bond and she'd probably go with someone she knows. That leaves one obvious candidate, and one inescapable conclusion: Taravangian is going to end up bonding the Nightwatcher! (Probably on one of his super-compassionate days. I hope. And then stabbing Odium in the back with his new powers.)

"Too obvious" is tricky, because while it might be obvious to people on forums picking over every detail, it might be very much NOT obvious to people who just read through once. So something being "very obvious" here might read more like being "well-foreshadowed, obvious in retrospect but never saw it until it happened" to a lot of people.