Gilphon

My assumption is that they've discovered something that's more practical than 'keep the spike in blood' thing. Like a way trick the spike so that it thinks it's in a body no matter what's actually happening. Or maybe you can do something weird with Intent or a bind point or the spike itself where the decay just doesn't happen period.

If we assume that Bone Spores are indeed White Sand, I don't think it's truly a 13th Aether- that's comparable to how Rosharans would be see a Seon, I think. Seons are cognitive beings that form bonds with humans and the humans get a magical benefit out of that, so a Rosharan might be tempted to call them an 11th variety of Radiant Spren, but that's not really what they are. Similarly, I think White Sand is similar to Aether because it's operating on the same underlying principles, but it's not quite the same thing. Like White Sand relies on an external power source but recharges quite easily, while an Aether spore seems to having an internal but finite amount of power.

About the stains on Mraize's pants- At one point in Tress it's mentioned that if you let dead spores just lie there for long enough, they leave behind stains that are hard to clean out. I would imagine that's similar to what happened to Mraize.

I don't see why Autonomy would have to specifically purify the Investiture for the shardpool- if Radiants can use Voidlight and Returned can use Stormlight, why shouldn't Allomancers be able to use 'raw' Autonomy investiture? I think the shardpool is just a result of whatever mechanism she was using to make Trellium

I feel like there's a fairly obvious theory here that wasn't brought up- When Kelsier says that the Ghostbloods have put something into motion, he's referring to the Herald's death. (Which does of course make me think of a certain place where we know there was a Seon and Ghostblood agents and suspect that there was a Herald, but it doesn't have to be there; there were a bunch of Heralds around Kholinar and therefore within Thadiakar's reach, and the Ghostbloods might have other Seons.) But regardless, it would make the timeline feel a lot less coincidental. A Herald did just coincidentally die the same night as Gavilar set a dozen plans into motion, she was killed by one of said plans.

So, like, a lot of Rosharan fauna has magic stuff incorporated into their biology. Gemhearts and what not. I imagine anti-Lifelight would be quite bad for those. But to a totally mundane creature, it'd probably just to a totally mundane stab.

So, my main objection was 'wait, so all nine heralds have managed to avoid dying for the past 4000 years? I get that they don't age, but accidents happen'. But what if, for some reason, you need to use a living Shardblade to kill them? That would be a much more unlikely sequence of events, and it would explain why Nale thought that Radiants could cause a Desolation.

Or Ishar just directly hacks into wherever the visions are and fakes the entire thing. And I do feel like Ishar is the only one who could do all this. Well Cultivation or Odium probably could, but it's doesn't seem like a thing either of them would do.

Come to think of it, if this is Ishar, that's a way for Gavilar to be 'on the path to becoming a Bondsmith' without bonding a Bondsmith spren. Like if Ishar was intending for Gavilar to replace himself, or even just give his Blade to Gavilar.

Personally, I was on the fence at first, but reading this discussion has convinced me that it makes a lot more sense for this to be Ishar than for it be the Stormfather.

Another thing is that the Stormfather seems to indicate he never really understood why the Heralds would break until his bond with Dalinar let him see things from a human perspective. The spren is this chapter seems to understand that situation pretty well.

For what it's worth, I do kind of question those WoB in this context. Like a paraphrased WoB from six years ago is the exactly kind of thing we have to reconsider now that we have new information available. Who knows, maybe Brandon actually said something like 'Gavilar was on his path for longer than Dalinar', and it just sounded like he meant the Bondsmith path from context? And a WoB where Brandon says that Dalinar and Gavilar saw the same visions, but then cuts himself off from saying anything more concrete than 'Gavilar had a different reaction to them', and then he starts talking about how the Stormfather works in general terms? Really that just reads like Brandon talking around a spoiler.

I feel like the Stormfather would've been able to tell. Like surely he could've heard Gavilar talking to himself, at the very least.

So I'm thinking that it does kind of need to be either Chana or Vedel that died here- I would presume that what happened here is that whichever Herald died this chapter was sent to Braize for five years, and then broke sometimes around the end of WoK. Jezrien, Nale, Kalak and Shalash were at the palace, and weren't dying. Taln, Ishar and Battar are accounted for during those five years, and Pailiah more or less is. And there's Vedel, where we just have no information whatsoever on her current whereabouts, and Chana, where all we actually know is that she appears onscreen at some point in the first two books. Which would make it more likely to be Vedel at first glance, but the theory people have been tossing around today about Chana's identity is a plausible one.

So um. Just to recap. Here's a list of everyone Gavilar had a meaningful conversation with that night: A spren that claims to be the Stormfather Kelsier Dalinar Kalak Nale Navani Amaran Taravangian Eshonai Sadeas Szeth He had quite the busy night, didn't he? Like we knew that obviously, but Kelsier showing up too was really just the icing on the cake.

I'm pretty sure we know that the so-called survival Shard isn't tied to any particular planet, which is part of why I think the survival Shard is Invention.

I'm inclined to think it's more of a Sigzil-specific thing. Because if huge sweeping and shocking changes to the nature of Surgebinding as a result of the events of SA5 was a thing that was important to the events this book, I don't think Brandon would be recommending we read this book before SA5.

Also I don't think it's that the Night Brigade doesn't know that Sigzil if from Roshar; it's that they're going to follow Sigzil wherever he goes and going to visit his loved ones means that the Night Brigade would also show up to visit them.

I assumed Aux was being passive aggressive here. Like how he's needling Sigzil about because responsible for his death.

Don't worry, there's precedent that says you're allowed to eat a sock-shaped cake.

Just what we know from the RoW epigraph; Harmony thinks she's reasonable (at least in comparason to Whimsy and Mercy) and that she might be willing to help against Odium, and that she wants to talk to Hoid again. Which would admittedly be a bit of large ask if this is what her planet is like, but maybe that's why Hoid hasn't been talking to her and Harmony was just missing the subtext.

On the contrary, this tells us that Roshar is still there and there are still people who care about Sigzil living there. That's more assurance than we used to have that things will turned out alright. Even Sigzil's disbelief at seeing Kaladin reads more like the impossibility of Kaladin just randomly showing up on an alien world than implying something bad's happened to him.

I'm also think about that Invested sunlight. There's quite a lot in Investiture being constantly beamed onto this planet- even Taldain's sun doesn't have effects that immediate. We've never seen power on this scale on display without a Shard being directly responsible. So, if we assume there's a Shard in the sun like Autonomy's in Taldain's star, the question becomes which one. Nothing about this set-up is Merciful, and it doesn't feel particularly Whimsy either. Invention is possible, but I don't get the sense they settled into a single world. So that leaves Valor and the one remaining unknown Shard.

An interesting note here is that is seems to be quite far in the future- Sigzil thinks of guns and such as modern weapons, seems to have be travelling the Cosmere for quite some time, sees things like electricity and hoverbikes as things he's encountered on many world, Scadrian tech has spread quite far- but it still thinks that there are people who love him back on Roshar. People he's worried about leading the Night Brigade back to.

He didn't directly mention Ashyn- but the reference to floating cities on a planet close to home is pretty clear in context. We're clearly not on Ashyn and this book clearly isn't Silence Divine.