Karger

T is still bound by the agreement.

I think the good faith portion of the agreement would stop this. At any rate I do not think that slowing the fight would really benefit anyone. In fact it gives Dalinar more prep time. I would speed things up if my only goal were victory.

I agree actually. I think the duel will end sometime in part two. Maybe even in part one. Just from a writing perspective the only way to draw out the full length of a SA book in that time frame would be to have a lot of viewpoints, fight scenes, and descriptions. If you max those out the work quality would probably suffer.

I am not sure you can get that off world. We know you can theoretically put the mists in gemstones. Seems the same rules about moving spheres of mists off scadrail would apply meaning both lerasium and atium can't be transported easily. I would add that we know it is invested as Raboniel is a soulcaster and could make almost literally anything else. Taravansium would make a lot of sense. My wild guess. Maybe Wildlight spheres? We know not only that Raboniel recognizes it as valuable but that it has value to her. Given what she is after currently Wildlight(Lifelight+Voidlight) makes a lot of sense.

I think it might be a trust thing. Given the large number of possible temptations and risks involved in having an agent abroad having someone who you know will stick to protocol, never put you in a situation where you are in legal violation, and will complete the mission with exactness would be valuable.

A lot of people are talking about Kel being confirmed as Thaidakar. I admit I find the arguments somewhat compelling although I do see problems with them. You can find the pro and against arguments I have managed to gather in the spoiler. However rather then debate on if Kel is or Thaidakar(we have probably all made up our minds by now) or not I think we should instead explore the possibilities. Things we actually know about him are scarce. We know Hoid does not like him, that he is CS, that he has been around for a while, that he is an important player on a planet(singular), that he is cosmere aware, and that he can project an avatar. We also know that he has a problem similar to the Heralds and wants to avoid it. Finally thanks to this WoB we know he is not the only leader of the GBs. If Kel is Thaidakar I can only see two real possibilities. However whichever is right I still do not think Kelseir founded the GBs. In this situation I think he would instead be a member of the GB "board of directors." I do not think that he founded the organization. I really can't see Kel making a new organization without making himself the absolute leader regardless of what has happened to him. Even if he is insane now we know from the Heralds that the way he operates would not be any different. The first is that he has undergone a situation similar to the Heralds and is no longer acting anything like he did when alive. This would explain a lot about #2 on the list of anti. Basically Kelseir is now more interested in destruction, never laughs, and avoids good people and free thinkers. The other possibility is that he has gotten worse and is a bit desperate to avoid ending up like the Heralds. Remember Kelseir is basically a spren at the moment and as we know spren see changing as a kind of death. It could easily be even be worse for Kel who was made out of Preservation's power rather then one of the Rosharan shards. Under this desperation Kel might act uncharacteristically because he is, understandably, desperate. EDIT. I am adding a suggested possibility that Kel has gone nativist and maintains his old style while on scadrail but is a douche everywhere else. I am not sure how this would work but it would explain some actions he has taken. If someone could develop it further I would appreciate that. If Kel is not Thaidakar then I think we can still agree he is some kind of CS. That would ,depending on the circumstances, give Hoid the ability to hurt them solving pro arguments one and three. If they are older as well it would agree with anti argument 3. They could be from a planet we don't know about yet or possibly somewhere like Nalthis where we have not yet seen full CS(a returned without a body could last a lot longer). I would like to see if I am missing anything. Arguments welcome.

I did not believe Kaladin's fourth oath was what you say it was. Just because something is obvious does not mean it is true. Our evidence remains entirely circumstantial.

That is still not confirmed.

Exactly. At the fourth ideal you could push through. Kaladin was healing. Teft was not quite there yet. However later developments pushed him past Kaladin.

I personally think it was because he was closer then Teft to the fourth ideal at the time. Remember the scene where Teft summons the a blade through supreme effort? It could just be something like that.

I would be scared of plenty of people who would not bother killing me personally.

You are getting in the way of someone so ridiculously OP that they consider everything that happens on your entire known world basically irrelevant. Makes sense to me.

We really are at the end of the actual facts rope. I don't think you are convincing enough for me to pull that particular argument although if you have some others I am all ears.

In theory maybe in practice a bit doubtful. The amount of damage Odium's champ can cause with the suppression on and Navani working on is limited. Besides what if they hurt themselves or get lost? The tower is a maize and Odium has no influence inside.

"Can you deal with my master can you deal with hers?" I think that was an exaggeration.

We now have 14 shards. Grouping them in fours should now be possible. Here are my groupings, subgroupings and why. I though subgroupings would be useful. I have them as positive or negative based on how I think a shard operates. Note that Negative does not mean evil/dangerous. Instead that axis refers to weather I think a shard is working too something or primarily against something. I am also adding internal or external based on if I think the shard's power starts from within or without IE Cultivation pushes things to grow against their environment but Ruin breaks from the outside. Members of the same group and subgroup are opposites as in allomancy. THIS IS STILL A WORK IN PROGRESS. I would like additional opinions whenever possible. Change/Probability/Temporal Shards. Ruin: Rather obvious but nonetheless clearly belongs here. Ruin is the shard of entropy. Its power wants to increase the randomness of the universe avoiding order. I am going to add the subgroups Negative External. Preservation: Similarly wants the opposite. Preservation is the shard of stasis. It wants to make things happen in more static and orderly ways avoiding chaos. I am going to add the subgroups Negative Internal. Cultivation: A shard of development according to natural rules. Think evolution, learning, and growth. Organisms who learn to take advantage of their surroundings based on predictable results. I am going to add the subgroups Positive Internal. Wimsey: This one might be a bit controversial but I personally see Wimsey as this temporal rather then emotional shard. It also functions a lot as an anti Cultivation which is somewhat rational. Wimsey is random but random in such a way that coincidences seem targeted. You flip a coin 100 times and never get tails. You bet your house on this new inexplicable fact of nature and get heads. I am going to add the subgroups Positive External. Connection/Relation Shards Autonomy: A shard of independence and mastery. Wants things less connected and for existing connections to weaken. I am going to add the subgroups Negative Internal. Honor: A shard of connection and promises. Wants things to get steadily more connected and for those connections to get stronger. I am going to add the subgroups Positive Internal. Dominion: A shard of ownership. Wants for things to fall under an authority. I am going to add the subgroups Negative External. Devotion: A shard of caring. Wants to give authority to another. I am going to add the subgroup Positives External. Desire/Emotion Shards Valor: A shard of courage and acting against interest Works to eliminate dangers and follow through on difficult missions. I am going to add the subgroups Positive Internal. Mercy: A shard of defense and reaction. Works to eliminate cruelty or death. I am going to add the subgroups Negative Internal. Ambition: A shard of wants or desires. Works to grab, take, or master. I am going to add the subgroups Positive External. Odium: A shard of hatred and emotion. Works to topple all wrong or punish those who abuse what they have. I am going to add the subgroups Negative External. Interpretation/Creation Shards. Invention: A shard of advantages and planing. Wants to create things of interest or use. I am going to add the subgroups Positive External. Endowment: A shard of beautifying. Wants to make a more vibrant, colorful, or interesting. The shard that made our lives miserable. I am going to add the subgroup Positive Internal. Speculative shard Prudence: We know a little about a Wisdom shard. I choose Prudence because I think it is a good ant-Invention. I am going to add the subgroups Negative Internal. Speculative shard: Correction. A shard of elimination and judgement. Adonalsium might believe that something is no longer serving its purpose and required alteration. I am going to add the subgroups Negative External. Metallic arts to make things interesting and also let me guess a few things about fabrails. I decided to pair each shard to a metal based on its effects and then use that confection to figure out the rest of fabrails. I spoilered for length as I think the wall of text was bad enough.

GB corporate structure is Thadikar Iyatil Mraize. I think Kelseir would have contact with the person he employed only one level down. Let me put it this way. What member of the OG crew do you see getting Mraize? Everyone on Scadrail knows how old Kellseir is and Khriss can ID him instantly. He may have had three hundred years but given that Kelek calls him "old" he must have been the GB leader for at least fifty of those IMO. He must in the intervening two hundred years have: gotten a body, created unsealed metalminds, helped the southerners, gotten an avatar that he can project across the cosmere, joined the GBs, become their leader and decided to take over the universe.

Yeden was both incompetent and not chosen by Kelsier but by circumstances. He still has met and worked with Mraize. I don't think he would employ someone so brutal.

I think Roshar(I suppose he could be from elsewhere) is more of a traditional military empire and he is an empowered representative of said empire.

Yes. That would be a very lightweaverish strategy although in this case I do not think a particularly effective one. It is too improbable too do enough damage and I think it would kind of piss him off.

Given that they are answerable to a legal authority they actually care about and that cooperate governments are strikingly ineffective I think the first considerably more probable.

They fairly definitely an analogous concept. However we have no proof that the suit or the weapon is an actual set of plate. An Elantrain for example could probably make a suit given the time. I actually think the fact that the man wearing the suit is over seven feet is a much better indication of a Rosharan origin. Going along with the fact that he summons a sprengun(or equivalent) and cares deeply about laws I think we can tentatively confirm that he is a era four skybreaker(ish). Could just be some kind of shardplate upgrade. The right alterations to make space travel easier. Steel indicates scadrain or at least scadrain tec(although metals are fairly universal so this is less certain). Southern tec probably allows them the power even without having it in their DNA. D(if he were verbose) "Father I have mastered your physical trails. You may catch me one day. I will now pass through you into your mind." P "You thought that my playground was bad? Who is a sweet boy..." Here is what I think is going on. This is in the far future of the cosmere and the various groups are encountering a problem or set of problems. The military and industrial complex that allow you to defend your homeland from this tend to make people think much more imperially. After all if you are protecting a group of people then they should probably help pay you for it. Then they should adopt parts of your culture and there messy internal politics are really just getting in the way of this protection so lets get rid of those as well. Pretty soon you have a bunch of imperial powers. However imperial powers need a lot of communication to run effectively meaning eventually you get rebellions as dissident groups become better at communicating both with each other and the public. Rebellions weaken empires and make them more susceptible to other empires. In the end the surviving empires mitigate this by creating essentially a code of conduct for how colonization is done. As such the ones above are forced to follow certain guidelines at least officially so that they can rationalize what they are doing. The Ones strike me increasingly as corporate types. They expect results, they expect them now, and they only care about rationalizing enough so that no legal action can be pressed against them. RoW full spoilers.

I do not think Dalinar could retain his connection to Honor and become a CS of Odium at the same time. Leshwi says she can't even bond an ordinary spren. Also death severed Szeth's bond with his Honorblade even though he did become a CS.

Kelseir made it a point to get kinder individuals who enjoyed doing a job well and were willing to trust each other. I am pretty skeptical that would work.

For those of us keeping score at home. Considering the evidence for Kelsier=Thaidakar Our For Arguments. 1. Thaidakar is (probably) a cognitive shadow, or at least is in a similar situation to the Heralds 2. He is called "Lord of Scars" 3. Wit slapped him around Our Against Arguments. 1. Hoid says planets, plural. 2. Mraize says he talks to Kelsier's "avatar" 3. The GB are way harsher than Kelsier ever was 4. Kalak calls Thaidakar, "old Thaidakar". Kelsier's 300 yrs, Kalak is 7000 years.