Child of Hodor

Gavilar had a lot of meetings that day. At least three. I think he met with the people with the fabrial box before he met with the Heralds and that was a separate meeting from the one with Amaram. He met with the Heralds right before the meeting Eshonai walked in on. He mentions going to another meeting with his associates to Nale and Kalak in the RoW prologue, but he had already experimented with "the box" that sends things to and from Braize. I don't think Amaram knew much of Gavilar's true plans because he didn't even know the Heralds were on Roshar until Odium told him. Amaram thought the plan was to return the voidbringers in order to return the Heralds to restore Vorinism. Gavilar knew the Heralds were on Roshar, met with some of them and was planning on killing the Fused using anti-voidlight and who knows what else he was planning.

As others have said I don't think we know if it's Windrunner exclusive. I doubt that only Windrunners can do it, but a Windrunner like Kaladin is the type of person who would even think to use it this way to begin with, protecting others and all that. Jasnah is the only other person we see a lot of who has living plate and she's been keeping it a secret even through Oathbringer. She couldn't lend it out in the past without giving away her secret. Nale might have earned plate, but he doesn't use it in when fighting. The Heralds didn't have plate during the desolations. Nale is probably used to fighting without it. Plus he's crazy.

Cultivation is such a wildcard. She clearly has big plans for Lift since she intervened directly. The only way Brandon wouldn't give more about the "We killed you" is if the answer is already in the text. There are clearly two minds at work with Rayse/Odium so it just makes sense to me that is what he was saying. He refers to himself as we on and off, he does it when talking to Taravangian at the end of Oathbringer. He repeats himself a lot in his speech pattern. It fits in with two minds talking. Brandon could be fibbing in any WoB, but he did say that Cultivation was helping Honor before he died.

The Sibling couldn't make Towerlight without Navani singing Honor's tone because they lost the ability with BAM's imprisonment and they can't hear Honor's tone anymore with him being dead. At best they could do Lifelight + Voidlight.

This is what I feel the lesson is from what Rayse was trying to do. If you want to kill the other Vessels don't do it with direct fights. According to the Stormfather a Vessel's wounds never heal or at least ones taken from other Shard vessels don't "Those wounds do not heal" OB Ch. 38. Trying to kill all the other Shards directly is like running a gauntlet of 15 (or 14 w/ Harmony) straight fights, because no matter how much time is taken in between fights the wounds don't heal. @Mason Wheeler on why they call it the Old Magic: My theory is it is similar to the magic system on Ashyn. This isn't fully canon yet, but the people on Ashyn that can use magic are ones that get sick with an illness. As soon as they get better they lose their ability to use magic. They get a boon (magic use) and they get a bane (illness). In broad terms the Nightwatcher tradeoff reminded the early human refugees of Ashyn magic and they called it the Old Maigc. WoB hidden for length: https://wob.coppermind.net/events/62/#e3086 https://wob.coppermind.net/events/174/#e8243

These podcasts were a lot fun, thank you! @Chaos you have said you don’t like the one chapter then stop “rhythm” of the preview chapters Tor does. Isn’t that kind of how the Beta reads are? You have to fill out forms on one chapter before they give the next chapter.

I think the “We” is Rayse the Vessel + Odium the power. The power Odium was not being controlled well and developed a mind of its own. It’s trying to escape Rayse all book and then when he’s dead it speaks to Taravangian.

Yeah, Skybreakers are the least likely to break an Oath for “the greater good”. To them the Law is the greatest good and that includes their oaths. Plus Highspren are implied to be very weird. We haven’t properly met any, but Brandon has hinted that some of Nale’s odd behavior is Highspren influence, not all of it is the Herald insanity. https://wob.coppermind.net/events/431/#e13999

Probably something along these lines, it makes him stand out. The Singers, Listeners and Fused typically have longer names than this. It could be he had a different name and it was taken from him just as the Rhythms were. If El means god or divinity though, I don't know that they'd give him that name. Maybe he gave himself that or it means something else to the singers. Good find! I had no idea about this. Further support that the El in Nahel means god. As stated in a previous post in this thread we know god or divinity is in the word because Nahel means connected to divinity. As an aside, he is described as having torn out his carapace and grafted metal in its place including metal horns. I imagine he looks something like this:

Epigraphs: Way of Kings The Death Rattles put Way of Kings Epigraphs over the top for me. They are full of foreshadowing while being creepy and evocative. I like all the letters Wit sends and receives about the same so that's a push. I like Jasnah's WoK research notes a lot because they are about lore. Hanging out in a GIANT ancient library studying the deep lore is paradise to me. Dalinar's rambling Oathbringer forward fits with a guy who just learned how to write, but don't really say anything and take forever to say it. Navani's Fabrial + Metallic Arts in RoW were hard to follow because I haven't studied the metallic arts charts in a while. I was like "I'll need to wait until someone writes these down on coppermind so I can read them all at once and have a second window open to the allomancy chart". Contrast that with other epigraphs about lore like the Listener songs, the Eila Steele or Hessi's Mythica. Interludes: Way of Kings As Rod Stewart sang "the first cut is the deepest". Perhaps some primacy bias here, but I love these the most. We knew nothing about this world going in and these interludes show people all over the place doing things with little connection to what's happening on the Shattered Plains. They serve as their stated purpose as a pallet cleanser between parts. Axies is still one of my favorite interludes. It has funny dialogue and at the end we see he's in a city of people with metallic gold skin then we see that bizarre giant spren. Baxil and his mistress is another great weird one with a secret herald and lore on the Nightwatcher. Flashbacks: Oathbringer Seeing key moments in the life of a man in his fifties was a great break from reading about how awful a teenager's childhood was. "Can I ever be forgiven?" is gutting every time. I like Shallan's second best, again similar subject matter to Kaladin's, but I felt hers were less repetitive and they were Lirin free. WoK next, Lirin is unbearable and Tien came across more as a personification of innocence than an actual person who was very innocent. RoW 4th. His experiment of killing off a flashback character we barely knew 2 books before her flashbacks didn't fully work which is why he felt the need to make them a hybrid of the Eshonai and Venli, another character we didn't know very well. Venli's PoVs in RoW seem to serve more as a way to see more Raboniel when Raboniel is not with Navani than anything. Because she's probably 4th billing as a main character in this book (behind Navani, Raboniel and Kaladin) the flashbacks lack the resonance with what's going on with the character inthe present that the others had. I was touched by their struggles to care for their mother suffering from something like dementia, but again, that serves more to underscore what's going on with Raboniel and her daughter.

I think it's this. Desolations before the Knight's Radiant were founded and codified were devastating. In the Nohadon vision from WoK, he says 9 out of 10 people in his kingdom were dead and his kingdom was luckier than most. Looking out the window Dalinar sees most of the buildings are rubble. I think this is in ancient Kholinar, but either way it's a capital city destroyed. They don't have the Heralds to help them, they need to focus on rebuilding. After the Knights Radiant order was codified by Ishar the Oaths of most Radiant Orders would prevent them from murdering civilian Singers. The 3rd oath of the Windrunners "protect even those I hate so long as it is right", would oblige them to step in and block an attempt to massacre Singers.

Argent has a deep voicethat could work as the Sormfather's. Cracking up imagining Dalinar asking Stormfather for show and tell.

Vengeance fits, especially with this vessel and how she got it (if she ever gets it). The vessel has some influence on how the Shard is interpreted, probably more so with Shard combos. Mistborn spoiler: I always thought Dalinar might become Justice (H+O). Odium is hatred of someone for what they've done, with Honor added the hatred would be towards those that violate laws (of men and of the natural world) and the Shard punish them in accordance with the law or their code. Justice & Vengeance being the two shards on Roshar would be interesting. I know the light combo is called warlight, but that doesn't have to be the Shard name. The shard of Stormlight is not Storm.

Cultivation preferred to be in a different form than her true form. If she liked being in the form of a human and lived amongst humans pre-shattering that may be how she met Tanavast and fell in love.

Yes, all of this. The only thing I have to add is Zahel's comment to Kaladin on cognitive shadow's like himself and the Fused becoming more and more controlled by their intent overtime (RoW Ch. 15). I take that to mean the Intent of the investiture their soul was infused/replaced with. Zahel is of Endowment who is all about giving things to others. He eventually became a member of the Ardentia who are slaves that can't own property. He literally gave away all his possessions by doing this. His job in recent years is that of an instructor giving his knowledge to the people who legally own him in exchange for subsistence living. The Fused souls are made of Odium's investiture and however reasonable many of them once were they have inevitably grown more hateful. Leshwi seems to have held up better than most through her practice of fighting respectfully and honorably. Perhaps giving her a Connection to Honor to mitigate the Odium investiture.

I thought one of the Unmade was the voice leading the Listeners to Szeth before the assasination. Ulim did it, but Nale basically sent him which I did not expect at all. I also thought an Unmade was in the black sphere. Honor locked Cognitive realm travel through the Oathgates. Sibling did it. I thought the Fused taking Urithiru would allow them to wreck the Fourth Bridge by severing the ropes for the vertical lattice. They never did anything with it, I guess it was inside somewhere else, I forget. Either way nothing happened with it. I never expected Rayse to die in this book or for Mr. T to ascend to any Shard, ever. Same I thought he'd be over it after 9 - 10,000 years. He seems very mission driven while pretending not to be, to see him pursuing a romance with someone in his spare time is surprising.

Tl;DR: Koravari wants to add Odium, or at least a piece of Odium to Cultivation. She's been letting Sja-Anat enlighten Truthwatcher spren to further her goal. 1) I don't think Taravangian will last past book 5. He's already been a 5 book villain and the characters that have the biggest beef and relationship with him, Dalinar and Szeth, won't be main characters in the back half. This may be personal bias, but I don't find Taravangian a compelling villain for another 5 books. Cult'O'dium (I know ) on the other hand would be a new, unpredictable Shard to deal with and would have more resonance with Lift and Renarin given Cultivation booned Lift and Renarin's spren is a preview of what Cult'O'Dium will be. I don't know that this new combo will be pure villain, but it would fundamentally change the world state and the magic system. 2) The magic system needs new angles to explore. While we haven't explored all surgebinding has to offer we'll have seen a lot of it, including some 5th Oaths by the end of book 5. We've seen almost no voidbinding (whatever that is). We don't know what voidbinding is other than it has something to do with what's going on with Renarin. What's going on with Renarin is a Truthwatcher radiant spren, which are more of Cultivation than of Honor, has been inejcted with some Odium investiture. If C+O happens by the end of book 5, this combination impacts the magic system in a more profound way than Sja-Anat at her current pace of enlightening 1 Truthwatcher spren per year. Speaking of ... 3) How come Sja-Anat could not change Radiant spren prior to OB, but now can change Truthwatcher spren, yet hasn't changed any other spren? Could it be because the other Shards blocked it in the past and Cultivation secretly wants it to happen now so she's allowing it in limited cases? Sja-Anat spren were instrumental in what happened with Renarin/Taravangian/Nightblood/Rayse which has Cultivation's fingerprints all over it in every other regard. Cultivation is much better at future sight than Honor (WoK Ch. 75), she would understand it and know how to mess with Odium's ability to use it by having a corrupted Truthwatcher spren like Renarin. Renarin's spren bond seems specifically targeted to mess with Odium and none of the Taravangian stuff works without Renarin. I doubt Sja-Anat is aware of Cultivation's influence, that would risk giving the game away to Rayse. Why aren't the more Honor-influenced radiant spren being corrupted if the Shards used to protect them and Honor is dead? Cultivation is protecting them. Honor used to accept the words when he was alive (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/406/#e14476) We see her stand in for Honor by rejecting and then accepting Venli's words. I assume she can do other things Honor used to do like protect their "children" . 4) Cultivation took a piece of Dalinar for herself in the OB flashback, saying it will be useful for her to have it. The Nightwatcher called Dalinar "Son of Odium" and we know Dalinar is strongly connected to Odium. She has Connection to Odium through this. If that isn't enough, her lover was murdered. She's had about two thousand years to experience strong emotions like hatred over this. 5) I'm torn on whether only Cultivation gets Odium or Dalinar and Cultivation team up and tear Odium in two and both incorporate that piece into the shard they are already holding (assuming Dalinar repairs Honor sufficiently) since they both have a strong Connection to Odium. We've seen the Power has a mind of it's own, this will be a problem for anyone trying to pick it up, Cultivation mentions the high emotion days being necessary to tempt the power. The power speaks to Taravangian saying he is perfect, the power was trying to escape Rayse all RoW. The approval of the power's mind seems important to picking Odium up as it is now, but splintering the power in two would presumably destroy that mind, making it easier to absorb a piece. Unless Taravangian controlling the power well for 10 days is enough to make that mind go away.

I think Rayse, the vessel was wounded. The power is OK. The wounds the Stormfather talks about in OB Ch. 38 were to the vessel which made it harder for Rayse to hold on to the power. But, to your point, Odium is not in a great position, the power is bound by the predecessor's agreements including one that trapped it for thousands of years. Whatever investiture it put in the Fused, the Unmade or other people/places in physical or cognitive realms it can't use for other purposes right away. I also agree that Cultivation has some tricks up her sleeve / contingencies for new Odium and has the upper hand. Whether it will work out or not who knows. Predictions: Champion Switcharoo Shenanigans and Shards Merging I am into the idea of Dalinar doing something similar to what Ishar tried to do to Dalinar when Ishar tried to take the Stormfather's bond and Dalinar's status as the person Odium made the contest of champions agreement with. Dalinar will use bondsmith powers to mess with who is the champion of who by taking their status and giving it to someone else. This would get him around the "baby champion" problem. Btw I think Kaladin's baby brother fits the suckling babe death rattle better. It's still someone Dalinar knows and would make Kaladin dread his past repeating. Dalinar could do the reverse of what Rayse tried at the end of OB, make Taravangian Honor's champion. The power of Odium is bound by the agreement Rayse made with Taravangian to spare anyone born in Kharbranth. In order for Odium to win Taravangian has to die. As for the end state of the world going into the big 10-15 year break: I like the idea of Odium either merging with one of the other two shards or, get torn in half and it's remnants getting absorbed by Cultivation and Honor (Dalinar). Rayse says Dalinar was not supposed to "Ascend" (OB Ch. 122). This means Dalinar at least temporarily can be the holder of the remnants of a Shard. Why can't a shard vessel like Koravellium Avasat Ascend to hold a piece of Odium? Dalinar was deeply connected to Odium his whole life "Child of Odium" per the Nightwatcher in OB. In that same chapter Cultivation takes a piece of Dalinar. She says it will be useful to have a piece of him. This could give her enough Connection to Odium to hold part of Odium. If the piece of Dalinar she took isn't enough Connection to Odium, her lover was murdered. She's had thousands of years to be in her feelings about it. She has probably felt strong emotions like hatred for a looong time. I feel like a shard combination will happen before the break because I think we'll see multiple radiants hit their final Oath in book 5 and while we haven't explored all surgebinding has to offer we'll have seen a lot of it and almost no voidbinding. What the Fused are doing isn't voidbinding, only Renarin (and now Rlain) has some, I guess, but we don't understand it at all. I know Renarin is a back 5 character, but I feel like voidbinding needs to rise in importance to the plot in order for Brandon to give us new wrinkles on the magic. Cultivation and or Honor merging with Odium would force the issue, making whatever the heck voidbinding is more plot relevant in the back half. Sja-Anat "enlightening" one Truthwatcher spren a year isn't going to cut it. I think it's more an indication of where things are going. It's also possible that Sja Anat can mess with Radiant spren now because Cultivation wants it and is allowing it. Only the heavily Cultivation-tilted Truthwatcher spren have been "enlightened" of the Radiant spren. Sja-Anat spren were instrumental in what happened with Renarin/Taravangian/Nightblood/Rayse which was very much a Cultivation plot. Sja-Anat probably isn't aware of Cultivation's influence, that would risk giving the game away to Rayse.

Yeah, I can see that. The power of Odium has been stuck not being able to do much for thousands of years and it is sick of it. The Shards have an intent or purpose they want to fulfill and when they aren't being used right or used much at all because they are stuck, they get frustrated, develop a mind of their own. Tangential Dawnshard novella spoiler: Odium (the power):

The text of RoW makes it sound like Rayse, the Vessel of Odium, was materially damaged by his plans not working out. Like Dalinar and Kaladin not becoming his champion actually hurt him in a way that made his death more likely. That's weird. The Shard vs. Shard battles did most of the damage and then being trapped for 7,000+ years probably didn't help. Rayse never embraced all aspects of the Shard. He prefers to be called passion and only says "they call me Odium". Compare that to Wit asking Mr. T who he is and he simply says "Odium". The Shard got frustrated, developing a mind of it's own. It's not been controlled well by Rayse, as Harmony theorized in an epigraph. Right after Dalinar turns him down in OB Rayse rants about "we killed you". I take the "we" to mean the Vessel and the Power since they aren't on the same page all the time and literally are two different minds. It gets way worse real quick only a year after Dalinar rejects him we see the Power trying to escape Rayse's body throughout RoW. I guess that was the last straw and the power is like "get me away from this loser". More generally, it's weird that a Vessel can take damage from "things not working out how you hoped". Which seems heavily implied by the quote. Is that what killed Tanavast? He thought the Heralds and the Oathpact would last forever and then the Heralds let the Fused out over and over until 9 of them quit altogether. Is that the damage he took that led to his death, people disappointing him? The coroner's report would say: "fatal case of being wrong" He was already dying when the Radiants quit according to the Stormfather in OB Ch. 38, did the Recreance finish him off? Or did all this weaken him allowing Odium to finish him off and splinter him? I can't decide if I like this idea or not. "My favorite football team missed the playoffs, ow!" *-10HP*

There is a barrier storm around Braize in the Cognitive Realm. A piece of it was broken off and transported to Roshar and became known as the Everstorm. Per Rayse in RoW Ch. 112 the Fused used to return to Braize when killed, but now they return to the Everstorm instead. Is this because the barrier storm is how Honor and the Heralds kept the Fused locked up on Braize? The Fused always returned to the Barrier Storm and still do, it's just Odium hijacked a piece of it (which is why it is red) and moved it to Roshar? The only thing Honor loves almost as much as an oath is a massive storm. When the Heralds and Honor made the Oathpact to deal with the Fused, it would fit his personality to be like “We’re gonna fix this with oaths and a giant storm! (and swords)” Its like fly paper for the Fused: they are drawn to it and get stuck in it. The Fused still return to the barrier storm when they die but they go to the closest piece of it on Roshar and unlike Braize there are Singers living in Roshar that they can steal. It makes sense the storm is in the Cognitive Realm since the Fused are cognitive shadows without access to physical realm bodies on Braize. This would be one reason why Tanavast and the Stormfather both know the name of the Everstorm as early as Way of Kings (or about 2,000 years before Way of Kings when Tanavast made the Visons). Tanavast made the Everstorm and even called it that because it was meant to be a means of forever locking the Fused up. He thought it would work forever because Tanavast couldn't imagine the Heralds breaking their word (OB Ch. 38).

Did Honor and the Heralds make the Barrier Storm? Is that how they bound the Fused to Braize? Storms and Oaths are Honor’s thing so when the Heralds made the Oathpact with Honor it would fit his personality to be like “We’re gonna fix this with Oaths and a giant storm!” Its like fly paper for the Fused they can’t get past it. Then Odium hijacked the storm (which is why it is red) and had his servants break off a piece. The Fused still return to the barrier storm when they die but they go to the closest piece of it on Roshar and unlike Braize there are Singers living in Roshar that they can hijack.

Yeah, I think they go back the hard way. They were never meant to leave Braize once they went there. They were meant to trap the Fused there forever. Honor didn't forsee them "bending" their Oaths so he would not have given them a special way to go back to Roshar quickly. Two of them do have the transportation surge, so they could go back that way normally. I don't know how Taln got back. Maybe he went through Odium's perpendicularity on Braize to the cognitive and walked. I don't love the idea of Taln not breaking. I don't want him to be "Swol Jesus" being tortured to save the rest of humanity after Judas (the other Heralds) betrayed him. But what I want doesn't factor in to what it actually is. There has to be some sort of twist to him. Either not as perfect as he seems or he's even more perfect and never broke.

My take is the Sibling chose to kick the Radiants out before the strike and shut off the heat to enforce it. The Sibling is like a party host signaling everyone should go home by unplugging the stereo and flicking the lights on and off rapidly. The thing that makes the timeline so confusing is that the Sibling says they "banished" humans from the tower in RoW Ch. 40, but the Radiants mention in the gem archive that the heat doesn't work and they don't understand why. Did the Sibling kick them out and in conjunction with that shut off the heat to enforce it, but not tell the Radiants that the Sibling still had the ability to power the Tower if they wanted to? Remember the Sibling loves to pretend. They were pretending to be dead for thousands of years. They were quite upset that Navani figured out they were still alive. They even convinced an Unmade they were dead. A dumb one, but still. They like to pretend so people leave them alone, but then they took damage that caused them to lose the abilities they were pretending they didn't have up until that point? I think this is what happened, but it muddles everything. On the "worthiness" quote. I used to think as David does that their worthiness isn't why the Sibling is withdrawing. But the Sibling tells Navani she is not "worthy" in RoW at a crucial moment. Both their lives are on the line Moash is about to finish off Navani and Raboniel is close to Unmaking the Sibling and the Sibling still says she's not worthy at first. It really seems like the Sibling told these Radiants to get out because they are not worthy. The gem archive seems to have been made specifically to leave something behind because they were leaving Urithiru. That's the impression I get from them as a whole. Different orders used them differently, some to say they love their family, some as therapy, some as scholarly notes. They were making a time capsule to leave behind. None of them seem like they were made before the Urithiru exodus was decided on, none mention anything that would indicate the strike had happened yet. From all this I can only conclude the Sibling kicked them out and began shutting down the heat and other important functions to make sure they left. Then the Radiants did the strike which hurt the Sibling.

@LewsTherinTelescope Great post! I was thinking of starting a thread on the Recreance timeline after the latest sharcast, but wanted to check if anyone else has. You've summed it up nicely. I'm absolutely with you on this first point. I can't get round the fact that BAM and her Singers were pushing towards Feverstone Keep as mentioned in the gem archive and a solider in the Feverstone Keep Vision says there was a front near there with Radiants. Plus, Honor said these were the first, it's likely the Recreance started either the same day or within a couple days of the fighting ending. Why would they choose to start breaking their Oaths in front of Feverstone Keep if they had all returned to Urithiru and argued about it for a ~month (50 days on Roshar) as was posited on the Shardcast. Feverstone Keep is in the general vicinity of Rall Elorim. It's nowhere near Uirithiru. https://coppermind.net/wiki/Rall_Elorim The simplest explanation is the first ones who quit didn't go back to Urithiru or wherever the new Radiant home bases were. Whatever discussion they had, they had near where the strike took place and they went from there to the nearest place where humans were to make a big show of quitting. Yeah, there are no Spanreeds, so the fighting may have been over for a bit, but armies still had messengers. Presumably there were some normal troops along with the radiants and the fighting was near feverstone keep. If multiple weeks had passed since the battle that's plenty of time for non-radiants to relay a message to a major fortress near the front that the war ended. Perhaps they took a a few days, a week, but longer than that is stretching it. Before RoW my thought was the same. The Sibling "withdrawal" was separate from the Sibling taking damage. I am also not 100% sure about this. They had to leave Urithiru because the Sibling kicked them out. I don't know that this happened before or after the strike, but it seems like the strike had not happened. They were preparing to leave when they made the gem archive. They made the gem archive because they were preparing to leave it. Leaving something behind as a symbolic gesture / grieving process. Different orders used it differently, but there is no epigraph that reads like it was pre them having to leave the tower and none read like they occurred after the strike on BAM. Sibling kicked them out before the strike and they don't seem to have come back. I think the Tower "failing" was the Sibling choosing to depower it. In RoW the Sibling says they went to great lengths to convince everyone they were dead. "everyone was supposed to think I was dead"(RoW Ch. 40) They could have been pretending from the start / told them to get out and shut down the heating to encourage that and then taken damage from the strike which actually hurt their ability to power the tower. This is what makes the timeline so confusing, were they choosing not to power the tower fully at first or did they take the damage first? I think they chose not to at first and the damage came after they kicked everyone out, but can't prove it. @WeiryWriter Made a great point on the Shardcast. Deadeye spren only show up in the Cognitive realm when they are unsummoned and the ability to summon/unsummon a dead blade requires a gemstone. The people who just picked them up would have no idea about this. The deadeye wouldn't have been viewable in the cognitive realm and that makes it less likely the other radiant spren would realize the extent of the injuries. This gives the other radiant orders some time to argue and come around to quitting without realizing the full cost.