Gilphon

I don't think the mechanism for moving the control platform has been described- I've kind of been imaging that it's just an Intent thing- that you just will either the platform or the building to come with you. I could be wrong, as I can't currently find the passage in OB where they first discuss both things being possible- but Shallan isn't described as doing anything out of the ordinary when the plan abruptly changes in Kholinar. And there aren't multiple settings for destination, I don't know where you're getting that. There are murals of all of the cities in there, but the slot itself is fixed below the one for the city it's associated with. The murals presumably being there as an artistic representation of the way the gates unite the cities. But, more broadly, you're kind of putting the burden of proof in the wrong place here. You just kind of said that OB shows they can bypass Urithiru, as if that was a thing that somebody did at some point and it would be obvious to us all that it was possible. But nobody has done that. The only time the Oathgates have done anything other than take people to and from Urithiru was Kholinar, which we know isn't how they're supposed to work and still wasn't transport to a different city. So I have to ask: What makes you think that they can go to any city?

There aren't a large number of controls in the Oathgates- just a slot to put a Blade into, and lanterns to provide power. There are lots of things in Urithiru that they haven't been able to get working, which is probably what you're thinking of, but the Oathgates are pretty simple, as far as we can tell. And I'm certain we would've been told if there was anything else obvious in there- at the end of WoR, we had Shallan and Renarin struggling to get it to work in a situation where everyone's lives depended on getting it to work; they definitely wouldn't have just ignored any mysterious devices. Additionally, re-reading the relevant parts of WoR just now made me notice that the slot in the Shattered Plains Oathgate is under a depiction of Natanatan, which implies that that particular Oathgate is associated with that location in particular- if they were meant to be swapped around freely, that would a strange architectural choice, as well as something of a coincidence that it happened to be in the right city when the gates were abandoned.

I don't think it's possible to bypass Urithiru- certainly there's no obvious mechanism in place to allow for that, and the Oathgate spren seem to be under an Oath that prevents them from letting the gate be used in any way that the builders didn't intend. Or, at least, I don't recall anything that clearly show that it's possible to bypass Urithiru. Though maybe Sja-Anat's corruption can be applied in a targeted way- the Kholinar one goes to Shadesmar now because that was the plan for that, but maybe she could, for example, make the Kurth one go to Azimir instead. Except that that would probably require the Azimir one to be similarly corrupted. And since the ones in Urithiru can locked from that side... if my assumptions are correct, this can't be used offensively. But they very well might be able to 'jailbreak' the Oathgates until their control and instantly re-position their forces. Which makes Sja-Anat the most tactically important Unmade at the moment. A good reason to convince her to break with Odium, as the Ghostbloods suggested.

I mean, I feel like if the Fused has Shardblades, we would've seen that by now. And Yelig-nar's hosts don't seem to get them either, but maybe that's just because they tend to die too quickly for that to be practical. And Renarin, meanwhile, definitely can summon a blade. But if assume none of those things are Voidbinders, when, then the question becomes really hard to answer because we first need to answer what exactly Voidbinding entails. If it's just forming a Nahel bond with a Voidspren, then it wouldn't be surprising to see a Blade from that, but if it's anything else, a Blade seems unlikely to me.

I believe there's a WoB saying that Ishar would look Shin to them, but both Szeth and Jasnah describe Nale's companion as 'Alethi-Like'. So that strongly suggests that he's not Ishar. Which means that Kelek is easily the most likely candidate

I mean, here's what I'm aware of that wouldn't be necessarily be obvious the first time you read them: Nale and Kelek are present, and Jasnah overhears them discussing Szeth. (Nale can be identified by the scar on his cheek, but I believe we only know that his companion is Kelek through elimination) Jezrien is hanging out near a statue of himself A Shalash statue is conspicuously absent, implying that she's personally visited in the recent past Gavilar assumed that the Ghostbloods hired Szeth. When told that they didn't, his next guess is that the Sons of Honor are behind it. I would guess that Jezrien was what Sanderson was referring to in the annotation, because that's the only hidden thing I could see somebody picking up on in their first read-through from the prologue alone.

Hmm. This could explain why Nale was on-board. Like, for obvious reasons I can't imagine him being on-board with the 'bring back the Heralds' end goal of the Sons of Honor. But if Gavilar's plan was 'let's give the Parsh their planet back and find a new one for ourselves'? That's a possibility I could see him being willing to entertain.

So a few things snapped into place for me when I read the transcript, and then this thread. I now feel fairly certain that the Black Sphere Gavilar gave Eshonai had Ulim inside. Like, he'd been handling those things a bit too casually for them to be Unmade, and they didn't seem to be the perfect gems you'd need to keep one of those imprisoned anyway. And we know that Ulim somehow managed to get off Braize years before the other Voidspren did, because he'd apparently been working Venli over for quite a while. And now we know that Gavilar was taking things off of Braize, but was treating it mostly as proof of concept, so he likely wasn't grabbing anything he consider to be too important. Like, maybe, one or two of the native spren. And I can't but think that Eshonai would've given the sphere to Venli for research purposes after receiving it.