Gilphon

It is, of course, also worth emphasizing that Dalinar was being heavily influenced by an evil spren at the time. Which I need to be clear does not fully exonerate him, because we've seen at other occasions that resisting Nergaoul is totally possible if you're determined enough, and because Dalinar himself categorically rejected the notion of letting the responsibility fall anywhere other than on his shoulders. But it is an extenuating circumstance, especially if you insist on comparing him to the series' villains, who didn't seem to be under any such influence during their main on-screen crimes. (Well, I could buy that Sadeas was affected by Nergaoul at the rift, but we've seen that it prefers people who jump into the fray personally, so he probably wasn't as strongly affected as Dalinar was) And as far as making amends goes, surely trapping the evil spren in question- and therefore making sure nobody else can ever be influenced in the same way again- counts for something, doesn't it?

I mean, Dalinar himself thinks his Amaram's crimes were nothing compared to the Rift, once he remembers, so this is hardly an oversight on Sanderson's part- indeed, it's why Amaram was so surprised that Dalinar refused to accept his excuses; Amaram knew that Dalinar was guilty of far worse, although Dalinar didn't at the time. But now that Dalinar has that full context, it prompts him to offer Amaram forgiveness during the battle of Thaylen City. 'I've done worse than you, and I could still change for the better, so it shouldn't be too late for you either'. But then Amaram rejects the offer and instead doubles down on evil by swallowing Yelig-Nar. He ended up being irredeemable because he refused to take his chance at redemption, not because of magnitudes involved. As for Sadeas- well, Sadeas is outright worse than Dalinar by any standard. He was equally complicit in what happened at the Rift; egging Dalinar on, making sure word wouldn't reach Gavilar until after the deeds was done, making sure Dalinar couldn't stop things half-way, and playing at least as an active role in the killings themselves. And then you have the way he spent the entire series being a untrustworthy bastard who expresses no remorse for his crimes and making it clear he has no intention of being anything other than a backstabbing rat.

I mean, the guy's immortal and has been around for thousands of years, I don't think he's gonna balk at sinking a decade or two into acquiring a new skill. Also: White Sand Vol.3 Spoilers:

As far as we know, his attempts to hack his way into the Selish magic systems have been unsuccessful so far- it seems he's having trouble getting around how region-locked they are. But he does appear to be trying; the Moon Spectre is probably a piece of the puzzle, and the 10th anniversary version of Elantris has a scene that implies he was trying to make himself into an Elantrian. I imagine that recent innovations on Scadrial are of interest to him for this purpose, if he indeed still hasn't found another solution yet. He uses sand for storytelling purposes in Warbreaker, in pretty sophisticated ways. It might be totally mundane, or he might just be trying to keep his sand mastery subtle enough to avoid drawing attention.

My personal understanding/theory is that's partially because they're descendant from the Radiants and/or Shardbearers, and partially because the generic lottery has made some eyes colours we don't see on earth occur naturally on Roshar.

Further 'Hoid-has-all-the-powers' tidbits: When he visits Shallan during her childhood, he sprinkled something into his tea before drinking it, and then Shallan calmed down very quickly. Like how certain people on Scadrial do things. When Shallan runs into him in Kholinar, he has a vial of White Sand with him that moves towards Shallan and partially turns black when she starts making illusions. When telling stories, we see him manipulating sand and smoke in ways that don't seem natural.

It occurs to me that we don't know what Odium's win condition actually is. Like, okay, he wants to be free from the bonds Honor placed on him so he can kill Cultivation and leave Roshar, but how does that happen? Surely he can't have been gunning for the 'Dalinar chooses to set him free' outcome all along, and surely he's not just going to throw in the towel now that that seems unlikely to happen.

They do age normally- Shallan's not seven anymore, after all. But healing doesn't make them age faster than normal, if that's what you're asking- the healing isn't enhancing what would happen naturally, it's magically restoring them to how they feel they're 'supposed' to be. Hence why Stormlight could heal Lopen's arm, but not Kaladin's brands.

I don't think it went directly from the Nightwatcher to Nale- he'd have little reason to want a more powerful weapon. More likely, whoever got it from the Nightwatcher caused enough of a disturbance to attract Nale's attention, since he's of course constantly on the look-out for crimes committing using supernatural means.

She sure did. Oddly specific, that. Her other offers are vague and general, but it's 'hey, do you want this specific cursed sword?' Like maybe somebody ditched it in the valley, hoping she could destroy it, and now she's trying to get rid of it by hawking it to everyone who drops by?

What, you mean the torture on Braize? 'Cause I had been assuming that they're Shadows when on Braize, and only gain physical bodies when they go Roshar, just like the Fused. Though hopefully they have a different source of bodies.

As aside, it doesn't read to me like Hessi's uncertain of Dai-Gonarthis' existence, but rather that she seems reluctant to draw the conclusion that Dai-Gonarthis is an Unmade. To be precise- her uncertainty can't merely be a consequence of Dai-Gonarthis not having shown up anywhere recently, since that didn't cause any hesitation in her identification of Bo-Ado-Mishram and Re-Shepnir. To me, it feel like Dai-Gonarthis is something that is widely known about, but isn't normally thought of as malign- indeed, perhaps it's something with such a benign reputation that even Hessi hesitates to suggest it could an Unmade. Hence why it's phrased as 'Who is the ninth Unmade? Is it truly Dai-Gonarthis?' Rather than 'Who is Dai-Gonariths, the ninth Unmade?' or something like that. But yeah, that poem being from the point of view of a Sleepless is a great catch, and now that you say that I can't think of any other explanation for why it would be written like that.

I took that line to mean that the techniques used to reach Braize had been developed in the past few years. Like it relies on some fabrinal that had been invented recently, or there are some engineering problems involved that Nale and Kelek incorrectly thought were unsolvable. Like, the way Gavilar phrases it reminds of some rich tech mogul talking about new developments have changed everything, and now his company will take things ever further, if that makes sense.

It should have some kind of appearance in the Cognitive Realm, if only because people are thinking about it quite a lot. But I don't know if it would necessarily have a particularly noticeable appearance- it would almost certainly be more subtle than the Highstorm, because there aren't as many things relying on Voidlight as there are for Stormlight, and it's not as well established in the Rosharan's minds. It's possible, however, that they did, in fact, see the Everstorm at some point off-page, and didn't tell the reader about it because its appearance would reveal something that Brandon doesn't want us to know yet.

Hmm. Perhaps Honor believed that the Dawnshards are firmly under Odium's control? That could explain why he was confident Dalinar wouldn't have access to them, but nevertheless believed that they would be used to destroy Roshar- the Surgebinders he thought would do the deed would therefore be the Fused, not the Knights. Which could be supporting evidence for a theory I saw on here somewhere- that the Unmade were created by transforming the Dawnshards. The main problem I see with that is I don't know to reconcile it with the 'bind any creature voidish or mortal' line.

I'd strongly suspect that the Bondsmiths all have similar Oaths- like the wording varies from person to person, like every other Order, but the concepts remain the same. Their spren may be very different from each other, but they're still granting access to the same two surges, and the name 'Bondsmith' implies the focus on uniting was there for all three spren.

Really the fact that the specific wording isn't hugely important can be deduced from the way we're seeing Knights show up all over the world- if the words had to be exactly the same every time, only people speaking the right language would be able to do it. The idea behind the oath is important. Both Teft and Kaladin were tempted to let somebody they personally disliked come to harm despite knowing that they should be protecting that person, and the oath was about affirming that that's unacceptable.

The Skybreakers believe that human judgement is inherently flawed, and so in order to be truly Just, they must devote themselves to something external- some set of rules that they place above their own conscience, since that can't be relied upon as an objective measure. Now, of course, The Law is hardly flawless either- and indeed, some Skybreakers might very well feel that there's a better measure than that, and choose to obey something other than the law- but they all choose to follow something that they feel is better representation of morality than their own flawed judgement. In other words, when confronted with a law that appears to morally wrong, a Skybreaker would sooner question his own moral compass than the law. The default rationale would be 'I must be letting my emotions blind me; there's a larger context to this situation I'm not seeing. Even if there's not, my attempts to might make things worse in the long run.' Or stuff like that.

Y'know, really Kaladin has been the character who most consistently annoys me- I found his WoK chapters were just kind of consistently more monotonous and less interesting than Shallan's or Dalinar's, and I spent a good portion of WoR furious at him; screwing up the only shot they had at legally getting rid of Sadeas was particularly awful of him. He does have good moments at the end of both books, though, and worked just fine all through OB. I can't really think of anyone who bothered me in a significant way in OB

For completeness, there are only two non-RAFO things we've gotten about Dawnshards: we know that Vyre's knife is not a Dawnshard, and that one Dawnshard is different from all the rest. So really, the implication that we've sort of seen a Dawnshard in at least one Cosmere book is probably the single most informative WoB we've ever gotten on the subject.

I don't think they know that Nightblood can permanently kill the Fused- indeed, I'm not certain that we know that's what would happen, as we've never seen used against a Fused, although it's a reasonable supposition. I do think, however, that Lift would strongly argue against using Nightblood, and that they're more likely to listen to her opinion than Szeth's. I also don't think they really have a good reason to trust Szeth very far- he just kind of showed up out of the blue and claimed to be on their side now. And even if they did, can they really justify just ignoring all the very public muders he's committed? I somehow doubt that 'nah, it's cool, the Skybreakers said I was pardoned for all crimes I committed before joining them' is gonna carry a huge amount of water. Certainly not enough to make Jasnah and Dalinar comfortable with the presence of the man who killed Gavilar.

I, for one, am certainly wondering if building a fabrinal that uses Nergaoul as a power source would be a great idea or a terrible one. I'm currently leaning towards 'experimenting isn't worth the risk', but I'm still curious.

The cities' placement makes that feel unlikely to me- they're scattered all over the continent, not confined to the territory the humans were originally given. Which I suppose isn't disqualifying by itself- maybe they conquered the continent before they forgot how to move the cities- but it still doesn't feel right to me. (My working theory, by the way, is that Urithiru and the Oathgates were constructed by the Radiants, but the other ten cities were made by Adonalsium just after he created the continent itself)

Weird thing about the endpaper: Jezrien is depicted as a Darkeyes. Which we know from Dalinar's visions is correct, but it seems like a very strange choice for an Alethi artist to make.

Soulcasting makes a lot of sense- we know she's capable of giving out material objects- remember the story of the guy who got a pile of fine cloth from her- but I don't believe soulcasting can make gems, so that wouldn't be quite good enough if someone asked for money. Unless, of course, she's powerful enough to get around whatever prevents most people from doing that. Or possibly she'd soulcast up something that could be sold for the amount of money you asked for, which would probably be good enough for most people.