ftl

Op is asking about Tyn, the ghost blood kind-of-agent that Shallan traveled with on the way to the Shattered Plains and killed with a blade, not Lin her father. There’s definitely questions about what blade she used at what time.

So, there's a few parts to this. First - Earth is not part of the Cosmere; that's in fact one of the ways to differentiate a Cosmere story from one of Brandon's non-Cosmere works. If Earth is mentioned in any way, shape, or form, the story isn't part of the Cosmere. (https://www.brandonsanderson.com/what-is-the-cosmere/) So Mraize mentioning priming a pump, or Hoid mentioning dogs, is not an indication that Earth is in the cosmere.There are no Earth references by worldhoppers, because Earth is not a planet in the Cosmere. However, there ARE other planets in the Cosmere that are more Earth-like than Roshar. Hoid constantly tells Kaladin stories and then complains that Kal can't understand what they're about, because Roshar is wet and full of crabs instead of "normal" Cosmere animals, which are more Earth-like. There's an example from way earlier, too: Hoid: "A bunny rabbit and a chick went frolicking in the grass together on a sunny day." Kal: "A what and a what? A chick... is that a baby chicken?" Hoid: "Let me make it more appropriate for you then. A piece of wet slime and a disgusting crab-thing with seventeen legs slunk along together on an insufferably rainy day..." Among other planets in the Cosmere, Scadrial before the Lord Ruler should be assumed to be very Earth-like. Nalthis also seems fairly earthy in its ecology. So sometimes, references to non-Rosharan flora, fauna, or expressions does mean that the speaker is foreign. (Also see: Zahel and Azure using color-based idioms all the time, or anyone who refers to "soil" which on Roshar is only in Shinovar.) But, the last bit is - in terms of expressions, the language of the point of view character is always written in text as "normal English", including expressions and idioms. There's a bit the Mistborn annotations where Brandon talks about this. There's something that is described as a "homicidal hat-trick", and he went back and forth on using that expression - because "a hat-trick" meaning "three successes" comes from a particular modern sport that doesn't exist in Mistborn. He eventually decided that using expressions was fine - treat the text as having been translated from its original language to English, expressions and all. But, at the end of the day, lots of words in English have etymologies, and it would be far too annoying to write or read a text where all words or phrases that don't have a plausible etymology in the local language are eliminated. An example of that is the word "dozens", used in the Stormlight Archive. On Roshar, twelve isn't actually a special number - they would refer to groups of ten instead. In fact, in Sanderson's original version of Way of Kings from 2002 ("Way of Kings Prime"), he ran with this and never used the word "dozen", referring to "tensets" of soldiers instead of "dozens" of soldiers, stuff like that. He didn't keep that up for the Stormlight Archive that was eventually published, though - it was just too much messing with the language for too little payoff. The current Stormlight Archive uses the words "dozen" and "dozens" like an English speaker would - even though on Roshar, they wouldn't actually have a special word for twelve of something. So sometimes, using a word or phrase with a modern etymology just means that Sanderson is writing to in English to an English audience, and nothing more.

I’m sure we’ll find out eventually, but no idea whether we’ll find out in the next book or not until the back five books.

The Listeners took Stormform because they thought it would help them fight and defend themselves against the Alethi. Once in Stormform, they're influenced/taken over by the voidspren in their gemhearts, so they're ignoring everything they wanted before being taken over.

I don't think so. For Dalinar - the memory gaps came and went at just the right cadence to prepare him for the confrontation with Odium at the end of Oathbringer. It's not that "losing his memory" was the effect and then it "wore off" - the whole thing (memories coming and going) was the plan all along, to get him to reject Odium at the key moment. For Lift - she never had the boon she thought she did. Sh says that she's never going to grow up, but she's been growing all along. Also, RAFO in RoW. Taravangian - up until RoW, his boon/curse hasn't really changed since the Everstorm started, he's been having days of different smartness/compassion like before. In RoW, RAFO.

Same thing, I think.

I used to be on the fence, but now I'm more in the "Hoid planned this" camp. So, to me, the key to making my decision was figuring out - what was Hoid trying to get out of this interaction? I can't believe that careful meticulous manipulator Hoid just walked into a meeting with Rayse with no objective, just to gloat and poke the bear for the heck of it. So regardless of whether he "won" or "lost" the encounter, he should have had something he was trying to achieve. But if we take the second-try conversation at face value, then Hoid, when he says that the meeting went exactly as he had imagined, would have remembered accomplishing nothing. He walked in to a meeting with Rayse, gloated a bit and traded some insults, and walked away. What would have been the point? How would this fit in to any sort of plan? Can you imagine Hoid gaming this out beforehand - "yep, now that I'm 100% safe due to a contract, I'm going to reveal myself to my ancient enemy. Gonna insult him, then walk away. Not gonna think too deeply about whether he can mess with me in other ways, such as messing with my spren or my Breaths." So why would he even do this? Why show up there? I've been thinking about it, and everything I can come up with feels really shallow and dumb, can't think of anything that Hoid would accomplish from a straightforward meeting like this that would have justified the risk of revealing himself to a god. On the other hand, if I treat the whole thing as a way of slipping Odium false information via fake Breath-memories, then I CAN come up with a narrative that makes the meeting make sense. Suppose Hoid is trying to slip false information to the new Odium, while Odium is still inexperienced with his powers and is building up his knowledge of the Cosmere. But how to do this? He can't just go up to Toadium and give information. He can't slip fake information to Odium's forces using normal spycraft, because Odium would see mundane ways of lying. But since he can store memories in Breaths... well, that gives an opening. Make memories that are, in some way, fake. Integrate them with the real memories, store them externally. Go into the meeting with Odium, let Odium think he's "won" by finding those memories, reading them, and messing with them. It's risky. Doing this requires Hoid to leave himself at least somewhat vulnerable, so that Odium legitimately thinks he's reading true memories and has Hoid in his power. But this way of looking at it - at least Hoid revealing himself to Odium has a point. An objective which he's trying to achieve, with some (pretty high!) risk. Instead of just being a situation of all risk and no objective. Though, looking at it this way... we and Hoid still don't know whether he actually achieved his goals. We don't know what memories Odium read, whether he believed them, and whether that matches up to Hoid's original plan. So we still don't know who "Won" or "Lost" this encounter. But at least the whole encounter had a point, from Hoid's point of view.

Pretty sure the scene is deliberately written to be ambiguous as to who "really" got the upper hand. You can make both cases pretty convincingly. We'll find out by the end of book 10 for sure, and hopefully by the end of book 5!

We find out that Thaidakar is also called "Lord of Scars" (matches Kelsier's scars), that he "Shares an affliction with the Heralds" (cognitive shadow), that he's from another planet that's not Roshar, and that Hoid slapped him around once. (Given how Hoid cannot harm anyone, and yet we've seen Hoid smack around Kelsier, that probably is definitive.) But we didn't get the name, technically. ...on the topic of the thread, the thing that I called was that the Spren were in on the Recreance. And the obvious stuff like Kal swearing his fourth oath in this book, Navani bonding the sibling.

Kaladin losing his scars at the fourth oath reminds me of Taravangian killing Rayse at the end of the fourth book. Not surprised it happened, but surprised it happened so soon and wondering where the story's going to go next.

A theoretically perfect person couldn't be a surgebinder, I suppose. However, such a person is entirely theoretical, since actual people aren't perfect; everyone has some sort of troubles. If that means literally everyone "has holes in their soul", then sure, you can say that's a requirement, albeit one that everyone meets, including Adolin.

Also, "wormed food" is a bad omen for sailors, but not anything particularly omen-worthy or dangerous for a feast in a palace. It's a minor annoyance (and that's how Navani treats it), not a disaster. I don't see why the sleepless would go around causing minor annoyances for Gavilar.

You don't have to have "holes in you" to be filled by a Nahel bond. That's a misconception. You need to be chosen by a spren and then swear the oaths, and it's true that people who are pretty extreme or broken are easiest for spren to be attracted to or find, but it's not a requirement by any means. I do think that his bond will be.... ...whatever's going on with Maya. Maybe it'll eventually be a Nahel bond, maybe it never will, but that's the bond he'll have.

She chose to break the oaths, including the first oath. The easiest way to break the oaths is to just decide to. Like when in Dalinar's vision of the recreance, when all of the radiants broke their oaths and gave up their plate and blades, they didn't really do anything. They just decided they weren't going to live by the first oath ("Life before death, Strength before weakness, Journey before destination") and that broke the bonds and killed the spren. Shallan shows us the moment where she killed Testament.

Ooh, I like that conclusion!

The Sons of Honor are basically gone at this point in RoW, so you can scratch them off the list. Probably don't even have any further influence on Roshar, the Ghostbloods and Shallan basically dismantled them all already.

I like that idea! It also explains why we've seen so little (maybe none?) of "Voidbinding" the magic system - because everyone believes it doesn't exist, because they all haven't accepted that Odium is Invested enough in Roshar to have his own 10-based magic system here. At some point, characters might discover there's a whole new magic system nobody's touched. (Back 5 books, assuming Odium sticks around?)

In Warbreaker, it's explicitly described as steel. (https://www.brandonsanderson.com/warbreaker-chapter-fifty-three/, https://www.brandonsanderson.com/warbreaker-chapter-fifty-one/) Thing is, the magic system being used to create it really didn't care about the underlying metal. Awakening has no particular interactions with the various allomantic metals. The steel base isn't what gives Nightblood it's abilities; it's the freaking huge amount of investiture that was used to create it, along with the other investiture it's absorbed along the way, combined with it's Command.

Yeah, I think given the timing of these letters, it's more likely to be Autonomy. If it were Odium, Harmony would know and mention it. Harmony's thinking about Odium, talking to Hoid about plans to combat him, watching him. And in the timeline, at this point Harmony's *already* opposing that force. If it were Odium, the force wouldn't be mysterious, it would just be Odium. Autonomy is conspicuously absent from the list of Shards that Harmony mentions contacting. That fits with Autonomy being an "unseen antagonist" - if Harmony knew what the red force was, he'd have named it in Mistborn, but he hasn't, so it must be something he hasn't identified by name.

Yeah, technological advancement isn't a linear progression, from more to less advanced. It's affected by the world they live in and what people actually research and how. Rosharans have very advanced progress in the study of light and sound. That could be because of the way Roshar is - Light and Tones are extremely important to the functioning of the world, they've got easy access to pure light of different colors via different gemstones (giving them an impetus to research this kind of thing), sound is apparently key to making Stormlight move around, their cities are in the shapes of cymatic patterns. On the other hand, they're far "behind" in their study of biology and microbiology. This could be because of the fact that Rosharans are more heavily Invested than normal, giving them stronger immune systems and making disease theory not really work right. In addition, because Spren are such are core part of the ecosystem, normal biology studies just don't work right - if you tried to take apart a large crustacean to find out how it works, you'd find that things don't add up, because the spren bonds are key to making creatures on Roshar function. So yeah. Roshar has it's own unique mix of scientific knowledge and ignorance. It's not really medieval or pre-industrial or industrial - some areas are more advanced, some are less advanced, and there's no real reason to expect that all the discoveries will happen at the same cadence they do on Earth.

So, now that we have pretty good evidence that Thaidakar is Kelsier, it prompted me to take another look at the Ghostblood's symbol. https://coppermind.net/wiki/Ghostbloods#/media/File:Ghostblood.svg . Could it be a stylized image of a marewill flower? Do we know how many petals the flower has?

Are we sure about that? It could be that Returned don't have much of an issue leaving, so they're not interesting for Restares/Thaidakar to research in the first place.

https://www.tor.com/2014/08/06/stormlight-archive-scene-after-words-of-radiance/

I think in the next one, the Dawnshard connection will be made explicit. In this one, it was kept vague because Brandon didn't expect Dawnshard to be available by the time RoW came out, and so the books needed to work in either order. By the next book, it'll be okay to have Dawnshard be before book 5 in the reading order.

Back in TWoK (?) or maybe early WoR (?), Jasnah said that there was likely to be a way to fix the soulcaster, and she was going to have Navani do it when they reached her in the shattered plains. We don't know for sure, but it sounded like physical damage to soulcasters was fixable physically.