DiePie

Jasnah is about as Utilitarian as it gets among Radiants, and so we can probably say that anything she does is either to maximize the prosperity of the people under her rule, or to maintain the power of the Kholin Dynasty. However I don't see her as working with Rayse towards those ends, he's rather unpredictable and the only thing all her sources agree upon is that he is evil. Besides that, she probably thinks him as being the worse option (between Rayse and... not Rayse I suppose) when working towards either of those goals. Taravangian however... He is the ultimate ends-justify-the-means utilitarian. If there's anyone within the Radiants who would ally with him it would be Jasnah... if their goals align. And they seem to do so, Taravodium's goal is to help people ("save" them), and when a new dictator comes to power they're almost always a purge of those not loyal to them, which means that Alethkar might very much need someone to rule it.

I believe the official explanation is that just generally people from Shardworlds (or other places that are highly invested) have that extra investiture, not just Rosharans. Also the official explanation for Kaladin being so good with the spear is because he was good because he would become good, or something along those lines. I should also add that that thing he did with the Windspren from the beginning of RoW (where he used them to part the winds) could also be considered abnormal (though there's a good argument to make for him being close enough to his next ideal to weakly manifest plate. I think the idea is that just passively holding that investiture gives them better constitution. Using up that innate investiture under strain would be very inconvenient for Scadrians, most of whom don't have a good way of getting that investiture back. But personally, I think that his "personal quirks" are more so due to something big that will happen in his future. A large influx of investiture could mess with Connection-y stuff and give him a more personal Connection with Tarnavast as side-effects.

A few, well placed, Hemalurgic spikes should do the trick! On a more serious note, I agree that suppressing people's individuality would probably be more difficult. Your best bet would probably making it so that the separations between people's minds are as porous as possible, so that thoughts, feelings, etc. seep between minds. Leave that for long enough and eventually they're going to act more as one person. Now if you start during childhood, before people develop strong personalities, then you might be able to get something closer to a hive mind using this idea. But your best bet is probably spiking people's intelligence/ability to multitask and their connections to their bodies (assuming those things are possible).

To my knowledge, in theory if you gave a metalmind enough investiture it would start to resemble NightBlood, or any other Shardblade. I feel like I've heard that either on a Shardcast or WoB (if someone remembers where please tell me). Though iirc it becomes extremely difficult (or just straight-up impossible) to shove more investiture into a Metalmind after a certain point, which is a slight problem when trying to create objects like that. However if you could do that, memories stored inside a shard helping determine identity is an idea I really like. But getting to the main theory, the biggest problem with that would probably be that extracting someone's memories against their will is not something we've really seen someone do I mean besides for (spoilers for RoW): So we need a way to do that right? I think that Hemalurgy (or like some bondsmithy-magitech) is probably better-suited to your goals than Feruchemy, since the easiest way to do that would be to steal their connection to their weapon. Getting that connection to you might be difficult with Hemalurgy though

I think that alone is enough to prove the point

My wild theory is that all radiant Spren are going to be corrupted by Sja Anat at some point allowing them to use Voidlight. Assuming Renarin could sing to one of Odium’s rhythms, Odium would probably go, “why would I give you Voidlight lmao.” It’s not confirmed either way if he can use Voidlight, but Venli can because of her bond to a corrupted spren so I’m making the assumption other Radiants with corrupted spren could do the same.

I took the violet as proof that"Enlightened Radiant Spren are going to become a lot more common in the future of SA, and that the person in Shardplate is a Skybreaker with an Enlightened Spren. I also remember a thread on a similar topic a while back where someone pointed out that Voidlight lasts longer than Stormlight does, making it ideal for use in long voyages

I've been thinking of it more and more as similar to the ending of WoT, with Dalinar and TaravOdium conjuring new realities using Fortune and Connection shennanigans (like Kaladin's Tien vision) to try and convince each other (i.e. more of a "battle of philosophies). but either way these could be fought with flutes, perhaps both sides bring really long flutes to use as quarterstaffs while they play, or they use them to tell stories like Hoid does, to try and convince each other using song.

yeah we see a gang of his soldiers try to kidnap Notum in RoW, so while it's possible that at least one of his subjects was a deadeye, it's rather unlikely that his experiments were primarily to try and find a way to revive Deadeyes.

totally agree, was rereading WoK about a month ago, and Brandon must have had so much fun coming up with epigraphs about the voidbringers that were really hints that the voidbringers were actually the humans, and also those times Taravangian blurts out how he's damned (because of his work with the diagram).

yeah that's a good point. Even trying to haggle down the numbers (Honor may have exaggerated the scale of the Recreance to prove a point, all of the Stonewards/Windrunners who had plate/blade were there) the minimum count for plate would probably be 500 because of all the other orders, but probably closer to 1.5x or 2x that. Seems I was just completely wrong with my estimates.

can you point me towards a source on that? I would've sworn El said something about that, but on reread all they say is that Odium "made an exception". Either way I agree, the Everstorm's purpose was mainly to reawaken the singers, and also maybe circumvent the Oathpact.

I would like to bring up another point of contention: Do we know for certain that Bondsmiths' powers have to be in terms of Spiritual Connection like Dalinar's are? It seems more than likely that they have to use the powers of Adhesion and Cohesion, but there is no reason why they couldn't be expressed differently. I see no reason that a Spren created by Cultivation to represent her would grant Honor's whole thing (that of bonds) to a bonded person than a similar Spren of Odium. In that way someone bonded to one of the unmade may have access to those powers (or perhaps just adhesion, staying in line with the rest of the fused only having one surge instead of the Radiant's precedent), but they would be expressed in a different way. However it seems much more likely that most of the Unmade have the power to become a Bondsmith Spren, but aren't built in a way that would allow them to grant the two requisite surges. In the same way that your home computer can't fly a plane, despite most likely having the needed processing power, storage etc. It would need to be outfitted with additional controls, meters, and programming to be used in such a way. I think that Dalinar could probably turn the Unmade into Bondsmith Spren if he knew what he was doing, but that bonding one of the unmade wouldn't give you access to the surges of Adhesion and Cohesion, or even a Nahel bond at all.

if the Voidlight is being refilled through a perpendicularity (which it doesn't seem to be, since you need to pray to Odium for it), then I'd think all you could do is collapse the perpendicularity in the same way that Nightblood does. I suppose that with enough power you could probably cause the Everstorm to stop? I feel like either the power required for that can only be found in gods or that there's some other realmatic reason that wouldn't work. Would make a nice question for Brandon though. Either way, it's revealed at the end of RoW (this isn't really spoiling anything so I'm not going to put a tag around it) that the Everstorm is no longer needed to awaken Fused.

it might be that awakening "sleeping" fused from Braize requires Odium to do some sort of action... which means that if he brings too many over at a time he could potentially open himself up to an attack by cultivation (Something we've seen he's rather paranoid of), and so Rayse would try and play it safe... it's not like he thought he was pressed for time right? First of all I'm going to assume that this is around the time of the false desolation, when Human and Spren populations were most likely at their peak (at least during the era of the knights radiant). Second of all, If I'm not mistaken, we have confirmation, one way or another, that the largest orders (so the ones Brandon is talking about) are the Edgedancers and Windrunners. From what I understand most Edgedancers would have spent most of their time traveling around the countryside, visiting towns, cities, etc. to help the people who lived there. Which leaves Windrunners as the more important to estimate. From RoW we know that the majority of Windrunners are squires (I assume that those are being counted as part of their order), but that's because of unusual circumstances, more of them should have bonded spren but most Honorspren don't want to bond humans again. However, during the time period of the false desolation, I see it as likely that Human population growth outmatched the growth in population of Spren, so I'm going to say that about half of all windrunners were squires (1st or 2nd oaths) and didn't have blades. Third, I'm going to assume that, at any given time, only 1/5-1/10 Windrunners actually had plate, and that a small, but significant, number of them were reserved to serve as generals and aids (or for other tasks that meant they rarely were on battlefields). This leaves us with ~50-100 Windrunners with plate fighting at their peak... against Regals. Assuming that between the orders we get ~200 Radiants in plate fighting at any given time, even assuming they spend most of their time moving from place to place to counter strikes because of the lack of enforceable front lines, they would be able to deal enough damage to quickly lay waste to any regals we've seen, and kill enough singers that they can't continue the war... Unless there's something more. There must be stronger Regals than we've seen, or the Radiants are stronger than they were. Personally I think both, but that the Radiant's strength growth has been rather minimal (being slightly more efficient with stormlight, plate being stronger or more easily controlled etc.) with the exception of bondsmiths. After honor's death the spren would have gained more power, and more control over that power. But either way that's not what I'm here to argue, the binding of Ba-Ado-Mishram must have in some way weakened the regals, as they had to have stood up to the Radiants on their own. While a single regal probably couldn't 1v1 4th level radiant, 20-30 might've been able to overwhelm one, especially if they had the help of a Thunderclast, or Re-Shephir and a contingent of warform soldiers to help them it's possible. I do not think that Ba-Ado-Mishrim was required for that, it may just be that Odium is less interested in Investing into common singers than Mishram was. However I do think that we are being a bit unfair comparing the fused to Kaladin, there's definitely something going on with him specifically (the whole "Child of Tarnavast" that the Stormfather calls him and him alone, as well as the, 'he's good with a spear because he would become good with a spear' that only he's experiencing), it might be that your average Fused would have a much easier time against a 4th level Radiant than we've been lead to believe. Also consider that the fused may have had more access to Aluminum and Raysium, which could allow them to better combat Shardblades/plate. I also think that we're underestimating the amount population has grown in this time period. There is a much smaller singer population than human one, and human population has most likely exploded between the Desolations and when the story takes place. Assuming that there were a similar number of humans to Singers during the Desolations, human Surgebinders would have had to do much more work fighting on the ground than they do now, fighting fused. During the earlier Desolations however, the Heralds most likely didn't give as much of an advantage to the Humans, they didn't have nearly as much experience as they have now, and much of Ishar's skill seems to have to do with being a Stormlight Savant, so we can assume the same for the rest. But getting back to the later desolations, they were probably still difficult for the humans to win because they were so close together. The fused give more of an advantage in bloody wars, since they don't need to be trained as much as Radiants do, because they don't need to be replaced when killed (well the body does, but those are much easier to find than trained soldiers.)

While Fused becoming more powerful the more ideals have been spoken is a really interesting dynamic, I think that there just aren't any good Realmatic ways of explaining it. Like, why would the power of the fused be tied to the power of the Radiants? Which I assume is what you also thought was the main hole in the theory. I think it more has to do with a couple of other reasons: First is simply that the fused are out of practice, 4500 years of just sitting around as a blob of power is not good for keeping up your skills and they're probably only now finishing wearing off the rust. Second is this: The Old Radiant probably did have less power, with the death of Honor radiant Spren became more powerful, and so did the Bondsmith's abilities to generate perpendicularities and refresh Radiants' stormlight. Third, the plate-countering voidspren (the regrowth and tear-out-of stone ones, I forgot their names) just haven't been awakened en-masse. A lot of other fused are also either insane or asleep and so the old Radiants probably didn't have a numbers advantage (especially considering that Roshar's population has probably grown since the end of the Desolations)

I think killing off Moash is the easy way out, and that Brandon is actively trying to avoid that. He's trying to write real characters with real struggles, and if Moash doesn't kill himself after being cut off from Odium, he's gonna have to come to terms with what he did. I think he could have a great arc in the back half, as he struggles to forgive himself for what he did, and all he needs to begin as a lightweaver is a bit of repression, and to lose a bit of his selfishness. I would like to remind everyone that Shallan's kill list isn't all that much better than Moash's, it's just that Moash killed a lot of characters that we, the readers, were supposed to like and ruined moments for the sake of twists (you gotta admit, those were incredible twists tho)

The knife that was used to kill Jezrien killed him by isolating his connection to Roshar/.the Oathpact, right? Which in my mind makes it perfectly possible for Jezrian to be the missing connection, since his isolation/passing into the beyond could remove the connection he had to the other members (remember how all the other Heralds felt his disappearance when Jezrien died). Nale seems like the broken connection to me, he is openly working against the purpose of the Oathpact, though he is still alive and, narratively, could theoretically rejoin the side of Honor, and so a broken connection (one that could be repaired) makes the most sense to me.

So there are a few things we know on the topic: first of all the obvious thing that Pattern assumed that he would die going into this, and that the Cryptics were willing to send Shallan a second (or even third) Spren going into this. we know that Cryptics are highly analytical I would also argue that Cryptics also lack a lot of the individuality that we see from other Spren (the Honorspren, for me, come to mind), as evidenced by them having numbers as names, and the fact they are so willing to sacrifice themselves for what they see as the greater good. It's also shown to us in Venli's chapters that the Everstorm had been brewing in the Cognitive realm for a while before it was summoned on the shattered plains. So it makes sense that the Cryptics, after seeing the Everstorm, were the first to come to terms with the fact that the final desolation was coming, and that they would need to begin to prepare by beginning the process of bonding humans. This self-sacrificing nature is probably why the Cryptics were so ready to send another Spren to Shallan, as they had far more willing Spen than they do/did people they could bond, and were willing to take the risk of dying in order to get as many Radiants as possible. Also the Cultivationspren sending Spren out to bond probably had to do more with the Honorspren beginning to bond than the Cryptics, since they were probably the most outspoken against humans, and if they're doing it...

We know, from the Oathbringer epigraphs (from part 2 specifically), that the Shard Endowment calls him Cephandrius... <maybe spoilers from Oathbringer>

I do think this is at least part of the reason, while there's a WoB that says that Radiants can become savants. And it does seem rather convenient that Kaladin's powers manifested themselves most strongly when Syl was "distant" from Kaladin, as that was when their Connection was weakest. It would also help explain some of Kaladin's super-senses/reaction time, we've seen with the heralds that those are potential affects of being a stormlight savant. The heralds had upwards of 8k years to become a savant, and no Nahel bond to help them deal with it. Which, on a tangent, would explain why Ishar can fight as if he's burning atium, being a Bondsmith savant and all. I always assumed that was because of a) honor being dead basically gave a buff to all the Radiants (ie allowing them to do some things that would have required another ideal that they had not sweared yet) and b) that he was close enough to the 4th ideal so that he could command the Windspren (similarly to how he does so with plate). This might also tie into Savantism and all the other things that are potentially giving buffs to Kaladin.

I thought that Mr. T was betting on a second day of brilliance in order to defeat Odium... Which he was near the end, but I thought it would happen. I mean I guess I was technically correct, seeing as the minds of vessels are greatly expanded upon ascending to shardhood.

From Cenn's chapter in WoKs (page 41) Yep, sounds like Syl. First of all, we know just about nothing about the recreant and what happens when a radiant breaks their oath. It would also make sense that breaking the bond would be very similar to doing so with an already dead Shardblade, which seems to require the person to physically summon the Shardblade before breaking the bond. There is also that WoR (and RoW) seem to indicate that Shallan broke the bond while Testament was summoned as a Shardblade - and crammed in the safe behind the picture in her father's room. It is said that the blade would've disappeared (keyword would've) as soon as it was placed in the safe, but Shallan sees it even after the safe is closed. Even still we don't know enough about how "dead" spren work to make a call either way. Though it still remains that so many facts make a lot more sense assuming that Shallan bonded 2 Spren rather than 1, the thread was posted earlier but I'll do it again. For a while one of the biggest mysteries on the 17th Shard was how Shallan managed to regress on her oaths (which she didn't, unless you count killing your spren and then bonding a new one as doing so). Knowing Brandon Sanderson, most of the major character moments (Shallan's Truths, Kaladin's Oaths, Dalinar's singular character moment at Thaylen field), were probably recorded in notes somewhere before he even started on WoK.

Because one of the prerequisites of being a radiant is a damaged spiritweb, strategic soothing (or maybe rioting, though I think that giving a Radiant depression for the duration of the fight would be more effective). The problem with allomancy in a situation like this is that their main attacks (turning metal objects into high-speed projectiles, and blunt force while burning pewter) aren’t especially effective against Radiants, even without shardplate both of those can be countered by a quick-thinking Windrunner using reverse and full lashings, and that’s without shardweapons, which counter the healing ability of a feruchemist/fullborn, and pewter, by killing the target instantly when used on the right spot. And that’s without shardplate, which provides some measure of resistance against projectiles, and complete immunity to blunt force. I would say that a 3rd ideal windunner/dustbringer could reliably beat a mistborn, though most of the other orders would reliably lose. I’d say the same thing with 4th ideal radiants and fullborns, which in total puts your average 5th ideal radiant far above even a fullborn. I feel like people often forget the sheer amount of power that’s running around on Roshar, and how scary it is that it’s geared primarily around combat. Like a shardbearer without radiant abilities would be able to match most mistborn in traditional combat.

Also, because Mr T is newer to being a shard, it means he has less restrictions from the intent of the shard... which means he can do basically whatever he wants with the power rn, but even in the future he'll have more autonomy (lowercase a autonomy I think) than the other shards.