Saradas

Are we sure that there's no connection between the Midnight Essence created by Re-Shephir (The Midnight Mother) and the Aether? She has to be drawing on it somehow. Potentially the unmade all have connections with Aethers that make them more powerful.

I need to get to that scene in my reread to try to see if there are any specifics that make it seem at all... spikey.

So as we know, Ishar is up to some shenanigans, somehow manifesting spren into the physical realm. I think that he's trying to figure out how to get surgebinding powers from spren without bonding them. So he (somehow) manifests them physically and has a poke around inside them to see if it can be puzzled out. If this is his plan, I think he's doing this for one of three reasons. He's either: 1) Doing crazy things for no reason because he's as mad as a bucket of cremlings. 2) Looking to build himself an army of unoathed surgebinders. 3) Attempting to gain the use of more surges on top of those granted to him by his blade. But how? Well, we've seen his mastery over the surge of connection, so maybe he is either able or thinks he's able to somehow pull whatever it is that grants surges out of spren. The other, scarier option is that his 'surgery' is actually him experimenting with hemalurgy. Spike a spren into a human... What happens? Thoughts?

I love this. It's a subversion that extends the climax of the war for another bunch of years. Book 10 Gavinor vs Oroden? I've read that here and I think that's what the fandom is calling it but I'm not sure that's it's official.

He's said that he intends to be, but that could very well change.

That makes more sense! I should have guessed, as 10 is a very Rosharan number. This is cool - we know that their various forms of investiture are compatible (warlight, towerlight, ???light) so if we assume it's a question of harmonies, a three part harmony is harder than a two part but it's still very possible. As an aside, when I think of combining Cultivation + Odium all I can come up with is Expansionism, or notions along that theme.

From a balance perspective this makes sense, but I'm not sure all the current vessels would be on board with this plan.

I'm not sure - NB is renowned for straight up annihilating stuff. The honorblades, at least in the way that they cut, are similar to regular Shardblades. They sever, where NB destroys.

Oooo that's an interesting question. In the past, NB has seemed almost drowsy after glutting on investiture. And it does seem to have a hazy memory after that "did you draw me? did we destroy evil?" I'm paraphrasing beacuse I'm dodging work but don't have instant access to Warbreaker, but I'm sure it often struggles to remember what happened after a big intake of investiture.

So now we know that Nightblood is big and bad enough to destroy a vessel. Now, while Szeth doesn't know that's what happened, Big T does know, and must be aware that NB is one of the only entities on Roshar of which he needs to be actively scared. He's also acutely aware of how dangerous Szeth is, both from a mental stability standpoint and a pure lethality sttandpoint. With all that in mind, I can't imagine he's not going to make a play for NB - what if Dalinar chooses Szeth as his champion? Mr T can't take the risk of NB being in play and must be formulating a plan to rid Szeth of the sword. Now imagine that OdiVargo's champion is wielding Nightblood. We've seen it straight up Annihilate heavily invested entities and chip an honorblade. Scary stuff. Thoughts?

Good call! If he can figure out what it is about the spren that allows sugebinding and somehow bind that to humans, he could equip whoever he wants with surgebinding powers. The honourblades making unchained surgebinders has been scary enough, but they're somewhat limited in the sense that they are much less efficient with stormlight. If Ishar can circumvent that by using Radiant Sprens' spleens or whatever he'll become much more of a force with which to be reckoned. More scary than this though is the notion that he could be attempting to turn himself into the Rosharan equivalent of a Fullborn... A mad herald with access to multiple surges? I love this. It's not clear how long he's had his Honorblade so that might be recent, but are we sure he doesn't have access to surgebinding outside of that? He was the OG, right? If his manipulation of Connection is the reason all the Heralds speak so highly of him that would be cool as hell.

I think this is what seems most likely. Rayse says about her to Dalinar that she cares only for growth - good or bad are of no interest to her. She was obviously opposed to Rayse, working to bring him down, but I think that's lead to the assumption that she's a 'good guy' when she's shown really very little indication of that.

I had assumed they were mistaken about having killed that voidspren torturing lil Gav. I figured they thought they did at the time, hence Syl's horror, but since learned that it wasn't the case. I believe it's a part from Kal's PoV where there's a mention of 'killing' voidspren just for them to reform later in the cognitive.

Great questions. I feel like a lot of the naming conventions in the cosmere are very deliberate - you knew Axindweth was a Terris worldhopper the moment you saw her name. From Elantrians to Alethi, Northern Scadrians to Thaylens, Brandon has been very deliberate in tying names to cultures. So from this we can draw some tentative conclusions: 1) It is likely that she is of a culture / race we've not encountered yet. 2) She was / is someone that (holds an office or position that) Nazh, at least, respects enough to use her title. 3) It is unlikely to be a coincidence that Tan'avast' and Koravellium 'Avast' end the same way so there is a tie there. Why did they choose to settle the same planet? Is it as simple as to be analogous to the surname of a married couple? Speculation time: I like what you said about avast/dawn idea, that's something that could be explored. To me the linguistic jump out comes from the use of the suffixes ius/ium. In Latin, -ium is the male, and -ius is the neuter, with -ia being the femalen. If we put aside Latin genderisation however we have two suffixes that share a root. So... The only confirmed dragon we have referred to Hoid in a letter as "Cephandruis, Bearer of the First Gem". There's that -ius construction again, and there's another title. This time used by a dragon, suggesting to me at least that this could be a facet of their culture. Thoughts?

Dawnshard spoilers: Secondly, and said with less confidence, are we not reasonably sure that there was only one Dawnshard on Roshar?