Elegy

I don't think she's doing much: Also, keep in mind that Shards don't actively create or design their magic systems, they are natural outgrowths of a Shard Investing on a planet. That said, I think these are very interesting observations nonetheless! I'm sure this will be important for Space Age Cosmere.

Tread this part of the forum with care, there's full-book spoilers here! This development was foreseeable from the end of Oathbringer. Before the Recreance, there was a whole society of Radiants, and Urithiru was full of them. It's not like there was only ten or twenty Radiants during the Desolations. There's entire cities of Radiant spren in Shadesmar and whenever one of them decides to bond a human, a new Radiant is created. Also, Lopen speaking ideals showed that it wasn't improbable for squires to become Radiants. I definitely see where you're coming from, regarding Radiants not being that special anymore. But I personally thought it would be way more extreme after that one year. I guess 300 Windrunners (well, only 50 legit ones) are a lot, but I thought there would be more of the other Orders, given that Brandon decided to release the Knight Radiant Quiz before this book's release.

There's also this quote from Oathbringer, Chapter 68, when he and Shallan have a talk: This is the Stoneward's line in the Knights Radiant Quiz: Given that Taln is the Stoneward Herald, there just has to be something there. Even if it's just a thematic connection.

It's not that one, although that turned out to be his favorite chapter of the book. The scene he was waiting to write was the jump from the Tower:

It has not always been white: Also, Tanavast, another Yolish person, has white hair as well. That could be for the same reason.

Truthwatcher definitely fits Sazed well, but I think that Edgedancer works best. After all, remembering those (religions) that have been forgotten is his whole thing.

Yeah, I think there's two different perspectives on this, and I have differing opinions on both of them. From the story perspective, I adore what Brandon did here, setting up Taravangian as the main antagonist since book 1, with Rayse just as the typical "big bad in a tower" who doesn't have much personality. And then letting Taravangian take over. Now he has the power of Odium, but he also has the character depth that was developed by his POVs (which Rayse didn't have), his intelligence that was shown throughout the story (while Rayse pulled the strings from far away, so his cunning didn't have that much of an impact in my opinion), and his relationship with Dalinar in particular (which Rayse couldn't ever really have because as an evil deity, he was never at eye level with Dalinar). And that is just beautiful. Taravangian could only be deep, interesting and linked to the main characters because he was human instead of a deity. Now that he is a deity, he is the ideal antagonist for the story. So Rayse as a red herring antagonist worked. I'm actually happy to have him gone, because he was so bland in Oathbringer. But from the perspective of the fandom, I kind of agree with you. WOBs always suggested that Rayse was a huge deal in the Cosmere. And we've known for a decade that he has a history of 10,000 years of destroying things. You would expect him to be more relevant. More than a red herring for a more interesting and more intelligent antagonist. So yeah, it's kinda "lame". But I think we have to consider our special perspective in this situation. We're in the core fandom, and things look very different from here, compared to just reading the books without any WOBs and background information. Rayse has mostly been made into a huge deal through WOBs and fan hype, things like that. People thought he was the Cosmere big bad. I don't think the books ever actually set him up for that. It was years of WOBs that did that. So it might seem disappointing now (although for me, it doesn't really), but I don't think it will be a huge deal for future readers who can just fly through the books in one go, hear about Rayse in book 1 and have him die 3 books later. I think that will work very well.

Jasnah is book 10. That could change, but still. I hope we have all the Radiant Oaths until book 8 at the latest . . . It's also very possible that Jasnah's flashback will focus on the gap between 5 and 6 instead. We just don't know how the back 5 flashbacks will work exactly. There are other ways to get the Oaths across, anyway. Nale just dopped all Skybreaker Oaths casually in, like, one paragraph. Jasnah could do the same as early as in book 6. There's no way to say what Brandon will eventually do right now.

It's a fine balance. I've always insisted that too much Shard interference could make a story less compelling ... I don't want every decision a character makes to be part of a grand scheme of gods that know much more than them and basically play them around. That's why I hope that Cultivation's TOdium plan for book 5 isn't too deep, because I'd ideally want to see a showdown without any back-up plan by some deity. Just the weight of it all on the shoulders of a bunch of humans who don't really know what they're doing. It makes it more exciting. (On a side-note, I also still hope that Odium didn't cause the destruction of Ashyn too overtly. I think it's more interesting if the humans themselves just screwed up with a bit of assistance from Odium's part, rather than being manipulated into it. Because humans don't need some deities to trick them into destroying their planets. They can do that very well on their own.) Then again, I definitely see your point that these deities should sometimes do more than they do in the story, just logically speaking, and agree with it to an extent. I think Brandon is aware of the problems of this situation. The Shards have to be powerful, but not powerful enough to make everything else meaningless. That's probably why the capital-O Oaths exist, and other things that bind the Shards. Odium's raw power could undoubtedly destroy planets, but there are rules to how a Shard works, and these rules are a means to control that power - in-world, but especially for Brandon as a story-teller. It's a balancing act that will continue throughout the Cosmere, and he could overdo either side. I personally am a bit more worried about a "Shards do too much", but there's certainly at least as many people that see it the other way around. I just hope that we will get more explanations soon regarding the limits of Shard actions, because the ominous things that make it so hard for Odium to act are still very unclear.

So, first off, I definitely agree. It definitely works as a short-cut when talking about the hypothetical combination, so I don't think it's wrong to use it (it should just not be used as if it was canon). It's a stretch from the name of the Rhythm of the actual Shard name. Just like Towerlight, Stormlight and Lifelight are not named after their Shards. As with those, calling the Rhythm War makes sense for the characters who name it in-world. But I don't think that means much for the combination of the two Shards. I don't think the components work for that. Not when there's a Shard like Dominion around, which Brandon called "Conquest" in another context. I can't see why such a thing would not be part of a Shard of War. If anything, it could be a combination of Odium and Dominion. Honor doesn't make much sense in that mix, since there's nothing honorable about war. And that's basically the point of the whole story. As a teen, Kaladin thought the war on the Shattered Plains was fought by honorable men. Then he got there and realized there was no Honor whatsoever in what the Alethi did there. It was just greedy men quarreling over gemhearts. Dalinar thought the fight of the Heralds in the Desolations was honorable, but when he saw a vision of the Last Desolation in Oathbringer, he noted that it was just another war after all, just people killing each other. The fact that there is no Honor in War is so important for the whole point of the Stormlight Archive, I would be disappointed to find out that they are canonically this closely related in the end.

I completely agree. Note that "Everything" is capitalized. And that always means something in the Cosmere ... A capitalized "Everything" does not mean Roshar, I'm pretty sure of that.

I'd say being honorable and being judgemental are very different things, so I think it's still a possibility. It might be of relevance that Brandon mentioned that a Shard like Judgement would have been a good fit for the Reckoners world, were it in the Cosmere: (mild spoilers, pre-Calamity) But the fact that he dropped that name here makes me think that it's not going to be a Shard's final name. Maybe Retribution.

Not Skybreaker. Kelsier's arc in Secret History was basically him accepting a lot of hard truths about himself. It was a Lightweaver arc, so I guess that one fits well. Also Willshaper, definitely. Brandon has said that it's not uncommon that people could end up in several Orders, so that it depends on which spren gets there first. I guess that could be the case with him.

Demoux doesn't have to be that old. There's time dilation in the Cosmere: And worldhoppers make use of it: So it's likely that he's aged normally, but time didn't pass normally for him. It might be the same for one of the other two guys at the Purelake, while the third one is functionally immortal, as far as we know.

Yeah, that much is certain by now. But to put this into perspective: According to the Stormlight Archive Statistical Analysis page on the Coppermind, Renarin's total word count is still, four books into the series, below that of Cenn. Cenn died in the first chapter of the first book. I didn't expect him to have a notable word count in this one (or book 5, for that matter), but certainly more than this. Jasnah, for instance, has spoken four Oaths and knows a ton now that she's around Wit the whole time. Her POVs should technically reveal so much, yet she still had two whole chapters in this book (and in the total series, her POV word count that is more than 4x that of Renarin). Anyway, it isn't that big of a deal to me as it might seem like right now. It's just very odd. I expect him to basically take Shallan's place in the back 5 in terms of importance, so that's something to hope for. But I definitely hoped we would get a bit more of him a lot sooner after Oathbringer set him up to be super important.

Very probable. It's confirmed they have souls.

He needed several books as a main character - among them his own flashback book - and a Nightwatcher curse for that. I wouldn't say that Moash as a person is irredeemable. Just that the books have let the opportunity pass for it to happen in a satisfying way. Rhythm of War had so little interest in setting up a redemption for him, it's clear that it won't happen within ten days. And after that there's an immense time skip that would cut off the evolution that such an arc would have to be.

I'm not sure if Kaladin's decisions were even necessarily part of her plan. Maybe she just wanted Szeth to get Nightblood as soon as he realized that he didn't have to obey the stone. Since she can't read the hearts of men, she probably couldn't foresee how hard it would be for him to accept that, and that he would go on even after meeting an actual Radiant and being proven wrong. Maybe she didn't know he'd have to die once before he could move on and fulfill his purpose. I don't think she saw everything the exact same way it happened. Maybe the plan played out in more of a round-about way.

I personally feel like Dalinar becoming a servant of Odium after book 5 would dampen the impact of his decision made in Oathbringer. You cannot have that "You cannot have my pain" moment and then basically let him have the pain two books later. My favorite moment of the entire series would become significantly weaker that way. Brandon likens the end of book 5 with the end of Mistborn 1, which ended with the key conflict of the story resolved and a bunch of sequel hooks that weren't all too pressing. That could obviously still change, but as it is, it doesn't sound like book 5 will end with a downer ending (although it will probably be an ending with high cost, I think that's pretty certain).

This is certainly true. But that said, people with that philosophy can become Radiants and proceeds extremely far with their Oaths. Jasnah, for instance, is just as much "ends justify the means" as Kelsier. And she's at the Fourth Ideal now, which only 3 other characters in the story have achieved yet, as far as we know. So it doesn't necessarily clash with it, just does most of the time:

I don't think he plans to give up the Shard, ever. The point he has been making for a few books now was him deliberately choosing the maximum of power and the maximum of responsibility, so he can bear that burden and suffer being the terrible person who has to do what "needs to be done" for the best possible outcome. And he is sad doing that, but he's never been reluctant. I believe he got so used to the idea that he is the bearer of the wrongness he has to commit to in order to reach the greater good, he is entirely dedicated to that cause now. And his last POV is kinda explicit about him thinking that the Cosmere would be better off without the other Shards. He might even want to take those to become a new Adonalsium. "You must become king. Of everything." - Words of Radiance Chapter 80 epigraph

We got two new Ideals in total, and both were obvious before the book. The Radiants in Shadesmar were the most wasted characters in any Stormlight book so far, they just vanished out of the story without doing anything. And, of course, more Renarin! Because he's the most under-utilized character in Stormlight in general. His page-time doesn't match his importance for the story at all (cancelling future sight, the main villain's most powerful weapon)

Just found another WOB where he was asked about it and gave an explanation: This worries me somewhat because of the following observation. Nightblood consumes Breath (and other Investiture, but let's limit ourselves to Breath for a second). Every person on Nalthis is born with one Breath. Populations tend to grow. Which means that under normal rules of demographics, population of Nalthis should keep increasing. This in turn means that under normal circumstances the number of people with Breath on Nalthis should be growing. I can see the following possible explanations to this: Endowment can give Breath to many more people than are currently living on Nalthis. So, the exponential population growth has not yet reached the level at which Endowment's ability to award a Breath to each Nalthis-born human is seriously challenged. When it happens though, things will not go well. There is some built-in mechanism controlling population growth on Nalthis, making certain that the population stays within the limits. Nightblood's consumption of Breath makes these limits smaller, and overall may lead to Endowment's inability to grant Breath to Nalthis-born, but not for a while (essentially, Endowment controls population trends at she sees fit). Thoughts? Brandon Sanderson Just as a point you should understand, the amount of MATTER in the cosmere is finite too. As is the amount of energy. Worrying that Endowment will run out of Breaths to give is a little like worrying that the amount of carbon on Earth will run out because people keep being born. uchoo786 So just for clarification, once Nightblood consumes investiture, that investiture gets recycled? That's what I've always assumed. That it enters the cognitive/spiritual realm? Brandon Sanderson The investiture he consumes is not gone forever--it's not leaving the system, so to speak. General Reddit 2015 (Dec. 14, 2015) So it seems to be a combination of "Investiture is finite", "Nightblood consumes Investiture" and "the Investiture is not lost when it is being consumed by Nightblood".

Regarding the infinite Investiture and Nightblood - according to this WOB, Investiture is finite ... although the nature of the Spiritual Realm makes it intuitive to me that it would be infinite, I don't know:

I know this isn't entirely serious, please don't read this as someone being outraged But you could say this about every female heterosexual person in the books as well. Still Shallan (well, bisexual but you know what I mean) went for Adolin over Kaladin, Navani has Dalinar, Jasnah has Wit of all people. You can take basically every couple in the books and wonder the same thing.