Child of Hodor

Great observation! They look like they are guiding each other by clasping hands, putting hands on shoulders. Like they are afraid of losing each other. They came from through the half-moon on the left, that would Ashyn and that does look like fire coming out. I thought it was somebody's absurdly long cloak at first. The ground were they are standing currently is Roshar. Looks like soil and plants of Shinovar. I don't know what to make of the pillar(?) with snakes(?) coming out of it. Reminds me of how little hands come out of the Nightwatcher's head. Oathgate-ish tech is Brandon's current plan for how the migration was done. Not canon yet he hasn't pinned down Ashyn magic, wasn't happy with earlier versions of it. Shadesmar is his backup plan. https://wob.coppermind.net/events/324/#e9307 Interesting that this and the WoB seem to imply that Shinovar already had plants and soil as the first humans arrive. For whatever reason I assumed it was terraformed for them after they arrived. Honor and Cultivation do have future sight, so they could anticipate the need. Or maybe there was communication before the migration. Or I'm making more out of it than is there.

I second #2 (and #1 and #3 ). 1. I want to see the messiness of Dalinar's killing their mother and being a mass murderer. I want Szeth interacting with Jasnah, Adolin, Renarin and Navani to be similarly awkward. He killed Gavilar and tried to kill Dalinar twice! 2. I fear I won't care that much about the Singers. We'll be spending a lot of time with them and I found most of the Moash chapters deadly dull. I think it will be better because I did enjoy the Eshonai prologue and the Venli chapters, but the Moash stuff from his capture through his joining the ladder crew was the weakest part of the book. 3. We won't get much Odium. He was forced to withdraw and can't risk interfering directly as much. Hopefully that only means he won't talk to Dalinar anymore, but will still talk to Venli and maybe Moash. 4. No Sibling. It seems like the Sibling and Urithiru are linked and maybe the Sibling powers it. It seems like Odium is going after Urithiru because he asks Taravangian ("little man") what the humans have figured out about it. I am hoping the Singers take the tower and the heroes retake it with help from the Sibling. I'm hyped for this mysterious entity.

Yes, and the 10 orders of Knights Radiant are similar to the Aes Sedai's Ajahs. Each Order / Ajah is color coded and attracts people with certain personality / character traits. Windrunners (Sapphire Blue) excel at leadership - Blue Ajah is focused on pursuing noble causes and one of their members is most often elected leader of all the Ajah's (Amyrlin Seat). Elsecallers / Brown Ajah are focused on scholarship. Red Ajah hunts down male channelers / modern Skybreakers hunt down proto-radiants. Both are feared and reviled in society. KR are thought to have betrayed humanity long ago. Male Channelers go crazy. Both organizations are headquartered in a giant tower.

Yeah, it's possible there is another way to bond we have not been formally introduced to yet. We only have had the Nahel bond and gemheart methods explained.

The recent Horneater Shardcast talks about how Horneaters could have gemhearts. I'm fairly certain Rock has a gemheart and a spren inside it. It is the simplest explanation for his unusual characteristics. We know other mammals like horses have been come to Roshar and a group of them split off developing the ability to bond spren which make them MUCH bigger and stronger than a normal horse. https://coppermind.net/wiki/Ryshadium We don't know if Ryshadium have gemhearts or if they are bonding spren a different way. Rock is incredibly strong. He swings the trunk of a tree at Kaladin during a sparing session. An entire log. How had Rock lifted that thing? ... "Didn't stop you from throwing a tree at my head." WoR Ch. 12 He uses Sadeas' Shardbow without the aid of Shardplate at the end of OB. He can also see spren when most people can't. This implies he has some connection to the cognitive realm. I think having a spren in his gemheart. Not all horneaters can see spren and they aren't all as strong as Rock. This difference may be because not all horneaters have gemhearts, they are distantly descended from a mix of Singers and humans they may not all get that trait. Or maybe horneaters all have one, but the knowledge of how to intentionally bond with a spren has been lost, so most just don't get a spren. Rock may have gotten one by accident. I also think the Horneater caste system based on order of birth makes more sense if, long ago, the Horneaters could change forms. Cook son died? Well have the son that's in Warrior Form shift into Baking Form or whatever. Jobs are not assigned by aptitude because they used to be able to change their aptitude greatly via spren-enabled Forms.

I never thought of it in those terms, but you are right. Having to get a bane in order to get a boon is like you have to get a disease or other ailment in order to get a magical benefit. As for the Dawnshards, I like the Fabrial idea, something that enhances surges to a dangerous degree. I'm prepared to be pleasantly surprised by what the Dawnshards are. I was thinking the other day about how before Oathbringer we had heard about Parshendi Gods and knew they were of Odium, but we had little indication that they were The Fused. You could make a leap and say "Heralds are treated as gods by some human cultures. Maybe the Parshendi Gods are also reincarnating cognitive shadows?" But there weren't any strong clues to piece that together.

Concerning. He's mentioned not wanting to "Lucas it up" about revisiting the setting of Emperor's Soul and making the original worse. Can he not Martin it up too? It is very selfish of me, but I don't want him to become a hands on TV writer / producer because that could subsume his other work. I guess Stephen King's production never slowed much and he's had a million movies made from his books. Although, I will say the more involved King was in the production of the movie the worse it was usually. He hated The Shining movie and that's the best one.

LOL! I'm hoping for "I accidently wrote a Stormlight Novella last weekend so look for that over the Summer" or something equally insane.

When did Odium first get "trapped" in the Roshar system? It seems like it may not have been long before the Oathpact, which was within a couple decades of the destruction of Ashyn. Like Odium was trapped in the system after Ashyn was ruined, but before the Oathpact. Which was a surprisingly short period of time. It had to have predated the Oathpact because the Stormfather says: I infer from this that what H&C did with Odium is the inspiration for what the Heralds did to the Fused. Odium's Limitations We have this WoB that seems to say that Odium had visited Roshar before and was capable of getting around before the humans migrated. In modern SA, Odium hadn't manifested on Roshar directly until the Everstorm. He influenced indirectly through the Unmade, but it seems like he could not show up directly. He is not exactly shy once the Everstorm comes. He's talking to people early and often. His absence can't be an Oathpact effect because that only traps the Fused and Taln had been back for months before he showed up at the gates of Kholinar. Odium's absence from Roshar itself must be part of his being bound by H&C. Even now he only appears when the Everstorm is very close by. I think most of him is still on Braize (to the extent a Shard can be in a place, spiritual realm blah blah blah) and the Everstorm allows him to stick a hand out to touch Roshar. "That Escalated Quickly" Ashyn Migration to the Oathpact We know that not a lot of time passed between the migration from Ashyn and the first desolation because all the Heralds were born on Ashyn, except maybe Shallash. https://wob.coppermind.net/events/372/#e11945 They did not become Heralds until after they were on Roshar and they became Heralds at around the age they look like they are. Spoilered for length: Shallash is Jezrien's daughter. In the prelude Jezrien is described as looking like he's 30. Let's assume he was young looking for his age (when his looks became locked in) and he's 35 or so. He couldn't have fathered Shallash before he was a teenager, so her upper age limit is very early 20s. Let's say she's 20 when she becomes a Herald. Brandon says it's possible she was not born on Ashyn, but she might have been. If she wasn't born on Ashyn would be born not too long after. That puts the likely gap between the migration and the Oathpact at 20 - 25 years at most. Could Odium Create The Fused While Imprisoned? It seem like Odium became trapped after the Ashyn migration and maybe after he created the Fused. My understanding of the Fused is Odium interacted with their cognitive shadows after the Singers died, but before they went to the beyond. If they died on Roshar and Odium was trapped on Braize it seem like it would be harder to catch these cognitive shadows. Location still matters in the Cognitive Realm. That said Cognitive / Spiritual mumbo jumbo. Maybe Odium could make Fused on Roshar while being trapped on Braize. He did manage to kill Tanavast and splinter Honor while imprisoned. The "We Killed You!" implies it was a team effort, but Tanavast (in Visions) and the Stormfather both credit Odium with the kill. Odium takes credit for it when Dalinar confronts him about it in the OB chapter "Passion". Tsk Tsk Tsk Honor and Cultivation were a little slow to react if they didn't trap Odium until after he helped humans wreck one planet in the system which caused a mass migration to Roshar then likely encouraged humans to attempt to wipe out the Dawnsingers on Roshar, then made some of the dead Dawnsingers immortal bodysnatchers so they could get revenge on the humans.

Stormfather absorbed Tanavast's cognitive shadow after Tanavast died. He's in there somewhere. I agree with the OP that he is the voice saying Unite Them.

Which I feel like we still aren't done learning the significance of. I think this will be Szeth in book 5 looking at Shinovar. It kind of fits Dalinar in the Vision watching a representation of Kolinar get destroyed, but not quite.

Whelan is Brandon's favorite illustrator, if he has availability they'll use him. https://wob.coppermind.net/events/126/#e1771 I searched Arcanum for Whelan and it's a decade worth of Brandon raving about how much he likes him. Odds are good he'll be back!

Dangerous operation will be the Singers trying to take Urithiru. The caverns under Uirithiru will be explored. Arms race, Dawnshards of course! More Herald Killer blades, maybe. Fabrials, Navani has had a year to study the King's Drop, which she connected to Gavilar's black spheres, that are shown in the prologue.

As a character to read in a scene I like Odium the best. He has delicious villain dialogue. "You've seen me have you? ... Curious." "Taravangian, is it? Little man." Cultivation would be the most rewarding shard to hold in the long run.

My only qualm with the book is that we did the “Spensa joins a flight training program and they have to learn to work together” plot again with different characters and it was a big chunk of the book. it would be a little like SA2 being “Kaladin is in Iri and has to get Siege Tower 7 in shape!”

Knowledge of the Winds. @Patrick Star Knight of the Winds is really good. @pizzastrology I like Kingdoms of the West.

Tangent - I hate Lirin so much. He's a downer and a stick-in-the-mud. His pacifism annoys me. He even acknowledged to Kaladin that he knows fighters are necessary and what he really wanted was for Kaladin not to be the one fighting. How's making your wife live in a dreary backwater where everybody treats you terribly going, Lirin? Oh I forgot you care so much about the people there, is that why you stole from one of them? Can't stand this guy!

I was having a laugh at the latest changes to the Greedo scene in Star Wars and I felt a little pity for George Lucas and then thought "oh I hope Brandon doesn't go any further down this road with the Kaladin - Szeth scene". https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-han-shot-first-scene-from-star-wars-has-been-change-1839802913 For the uninitiated, at some point after the release of the original film Lucas thought that Han shooting a guy who was only verbally threatening him was a little too dark of a way to introduce a character that ends up being a good person. So Lucas changed it to have Greedo shoot first and miss and then Han kills him. People didn't like and it's been revised repeatedly since then. It's sad because it's never going to work no matter how many revisions they go through and Lucas was still trying in 2012. This makes me think of Brandon's change to WoR having Kaladin cause Szeth's death, but not outright kill him because Brandon felt it wasn't right for Kaladin at that point and he wanted to mitigate all the fake deaths. Like Lucas, he'll never be able to "fix it" because Jasnah's fake death hangs over the whole book and you can't change that because, to quote Lucas "it's stylistically designed to be that way". Brandon can only reduce the effects of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGRv8Zu1fU8 Having Kaladin cause Szeth to fall a great distance into a superstorm, but not stab him through the torso is a weird morality upgrade "I shoved him into the street, but I didn't run him over." To be clear I don't mind that he changed it, it's his life's work. I just don't think the change really fixed the issues Brandon perceived and I don't think he can so I hope he never tries and ends up still tinkering with it years later.

The anomaly seems planet or similar space object sized, but that could be deceiving. It is also odd for a planet sized object to be in the same orbital trajectory as another planet. I'm assuming it orbits the sun and isn't a stationary anomaly that Nalthis passes through as it orbits. Would think that would come up in Warbreaker, if the planet passed through a big thing of space mist once a year. My initial interpretation is their is some sort of cognitive realm bleed over to the physical that is clouding what is in there. Could be Vax, it is misty / cloudy looking like the cognitive realm on Scadrial which a confused Ati mistook for Vax. My other thought is something from the physical realm and the cognitive realm swapped. Silverlight? Would make sense for the system with worldhoppers known as "the Five Scholars" to be home to Silverlight AKA Cosmere U. They would not have had to found Silverlight, necessarily. I can't find a WoB that says Silverlight has a Shard, but a common theory is that it does. Not sure Endowment would like sharing the system .. unless it was given to another Shard as a gift.

It’s either Yolen, Vax, Silverlight or a Dawnshard. *dusts hands off* case closed!

I always thought of it as Honor's Visions because they are memories and ideas he wanted archived and passed on. Plus they come with the Stormlight (with the highstorms). Clearly there will be several in-world things that could fit by the time the series is done. We already have two, the visions and the hidden gems.

Prudence seems like a subset of Wisdom to me. They are almost the same concept, but Prudence is a bit narrower. I don't know that both would exist separate at the same time. An early Brandon clarification on the Hide + Survive Shard was that the Hide + Survive aspect is only tangentially related to the Intent. https://wob.coppermind.net/events/6/#e326 Prudence is directly about avoiding danger, it's one of the definitions. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prudence

I think it is a direct result of the Intent primarily and the way the vessel has interpreted it secondarily. Autonomy influencing the world by creating avatars that can think and act independently seems like it's the Intent more than anything else. I don't think Bavadin had a multiple personality disorder and therefore Connected to Autonomy best of the original 16 vessels. Or had a multiple personality disorder and happened to pick up Autonomy. I don't have WoBs or text I just don't like that idea very much.

I agree, at least some of the attempts to "unite" the world or a region by force were inspired by Honor's visions. The Hierocracy is prime candidate since the Vorin leaders claimed that they were receiving visions from the Almighty. One of them probably was. https://coppermind.net/wiki/Hierocracy They were defeated by the Sunmaker, maybe Stormfather had moved on to the Sunmaker by that point.

I think this is a new type of bond Odium came up with that is closer to a Nahel bond than the "live inside the gemheart" method the Singers use. Humans don't have the anatomy to do what the singers do with the gemheart bond. That's why Amaram had to swallow a gemstone to bond with Yelig-nar. We didn't see all his men swallowing a gemstone previous to their eyes glowing. I agree with @Honorless , this relies on the "give me your pain" mechanic instead of swearing a progression of oaths Keeping ones word is an important aspect of Honor, as interpreted by Tanavast anyways. Growth / Progress is very important to Cultivation. KR don't swear all the oath's at once they swear one and prove they can keep it for a while then another and another etc. I'm not clear on whether they bonded the Thrill or whether the Thrill facilitated their bonding to voidspren by filling them up with glorious, wondrous PASSION. Filling them up to their breaking point with it. Overwhelming them to make it more likely that they will give their pain away. "Passion, son. Glorious, wondrous passion. Emotion. It's what defines men - though ironically you are poor vessels for it. It fill you up and breaks you, unless you find someone on to share the burden" - Odium to Dalinar in OB Ch. 57 It seems like the Thrill was doing to them what it did to Dalinar when Odium tried to convert him. They all sag forward demoralized for a bit before their eyes glow, similar to how Dalinar collapses forward before his big comeback.