Proletariat

That's true, but win or lose Odium is meant to be bound to Roshar by the duel and can only send agents unless it's a draw (and Brandon decides to spoil that ending in TLM). Kelsier also is trying to figure out how to leave Scadrial using the Rosharan example, and as of this book Kelsier cannot so that likely means none of Odium's agents have gotten off of Roshar by the time of TLM either. I think for the publishing of the next era of Mistborn it will also make things harder if the main villain of this book is revealed to be Odium. All of the next era's Mistborn books are meant to be released before Stormlight 6 so if Odium's plans for Scadrial have heaps progressed then Brandon will have to both dance around spoiling Stormlight, and overloading the audience on a never ending Roshar v Scadrial arc all the way from now until we're all almost retirement age. Also we can infer from the Sixth of the Dusk sequel that in the space age that relationship has broken down in some form given that Sixth is going off planet to start a non-aligned alliance of sorts to stand against both Roshar and Scadrial. WoB also indicates Rayse would've gone after Autonomy after killing Honour. Autonomy or their avatars may support killing shards with pretty counterposed intents to their own like Dominion on Sel, but that doesn't mean they also support Odium conquering the cosmere nor does there seem to be any good will in the relationship. None of which eliminates Odium as a possibility, but certainly does make it seem like it's less likely than it might at first appear when we're shown the familiar red eyes.

TBH I'm increasingly won to the idea that it's Autonomy corrupting what's left of Ruin, and the destruction of the planet is the alternative to its subjugation under Odium. Trell wants the planet gone based on his worshippers' statements, and has accelerated that plan. If being ruled by the men of red and gold is the alternative (and this being ruled by red and gold sounds like the threat of Odium) to ash, then it means Trell has been thwarted if that rule comes to pass. Whoever the men of gold and red are they don't share an agenda with Trell. The two counterposed possibilities of annihilation or conquest alongside the fact that Harmony has agents on Roshar and is aware of Odium, but has admitted to being unable to identify the shard makes it seem less likely. Plus the Ghostbloods deal pretty happily with Odium's forces, despite presumably being hostile to the idea of blowing up Scadrial with Kelsier on it. It would also spoil the next Stormlight book which will feature Odium heavily, and the question of whether he gets to leave the planet and wage war. There's also the fact that this Trellium stuff is clearly a corruption of a god metal due to the rust, rather than its own thing entirely. There's only one silvery metal we know of that's not only able to give someone like Bleeder F-Steel and A-Steel and F-Gold to this new henchmen, and that's Atium not Raysium.

Heralds have (had?) a direct connection to Honor to power the surges, so when using their blades the inefficiency doesn't matter because they can just do kind of unlimited levels of stuff with it. I'd think of it a little bit like the Heralds are all bonded to Honor in the way radiants are bonded to their spren

It's a bit difficult to respond directly because of the spoilers in quotes, but these WoBs are salient: Essentially Ruin and Preservation are in conflict more severely than almost any other pairing of Shards. The mixing of their investiture is almost like investiture and anti-investiture in its reaction, which is not what we see otherwise with Shards even if they need to be manually harmonised using music to integrate. Sazed has been developed in ways to balance Ruin and Preservation, but a Harmony that fails is literally in Discord. There's not a lot of basis for thinking this kind of Shardic pairing would have names like Survival or Life anything, because it is more a description as to whether they are in balance or not which isn't going to be a factor for almost any other combination. As for Vin specifically we get hints from this WoB: This suggests that she would not be in balance, and either she would become Discord or Ruin would be pushed out with one of the following options.

I mean Harmony's intent is not Harmony, rather it is a harmonisation of Preservation and Ruin's intent. The two shards were uniquely polarised so anyone who is not balanced would be Discord; this is why Harmony also is so constrained despite being the most invested being in the Cosmere because he is always attempting to harmonise the two intents lest he fall into Discord.

I'm pretty convinced by this that the unmaking of Mishram (and maybe the other Unmade) was the thing the Fused did that pissed off the spren in the first place, and the stories are metaphors for humans dealing with Mishram and the spren. A couple of things stick out for me though: This suggests that humans can bond in a way that Singers cannot, but we have seen multiple Singers bond spren. Even the Sibling seemed certain it was possible, and it seems down to trust that this bond does not happen rather than physiology. The stones of Urithuru have also spoken to Singers who have the surge of Stoneshaping before. It is therefore not this bond that is the 'meat' that spren sought. The second issue adjacent to this is one of chronology. The Fused appeared before the Heralds received their powers from Honor, and the Knights Radiant (i.e humans with surges) came after the Heralds and were not expected by Honor. That means that whatever it was that led to the Fused feeling screwed over by spren going over to humans happened before they got Radiant bonds. Another is that while I think you're right it's about humans effectively breaking their promise by getting in touch with the mysteries of the world, spren, and light etc. the story also seems to hint pretty heavily at the origins of the Siah Aimians. Is this perhaps a hint that whatever the original type of connection made for the smartest spren was to do with the Siah? Were they spren who were brought over in a way that allowed them to entirely experience humanity and start families with them? Finally there's a possibility further to this that I was considering based on your evidence. The Everstorm was necessary for the Singers to get complete access to powers once again and for Voidspren to freely jump between realms without Odium, but outside of that it required Mishram to give Singers powers. The quotes you give indicate that humans brought the highstorm in a way not dissimilar to the Everstorm, which Odium apparently can't put back in the cogitive realm either: So my suggested amendment to your proposal is that humans did make a deal with Mishram and the spren as in the stories, which changed everything and provoked the Singers to turn to Odium, but that this brought the Highstorm as a permanent fixture over from the cognitive realm and somehow created the Siah rather than just Radiant bonds. The highstorm then led to high spren being able to give surges later on even with Mishram becoming Unmade.

This isn't about punishment or even debt. This is a question about responsibility to do something about it. And you have that responsibility in real world, and so do the Alethi on Roshar. I don't know how to break up the code, so I'll just respond with some bullet points: Colonisation is not a one off event. It is ongoing. The slavery of the parshmen continued every day. The invasion of the Listeners is continuing. It is ongoing in the real world too. You can always do something about it, and you need to take responsibility for your decision not to do something about it. If you do not do something, then that is a decision you have made to walk away. What is the Alethi's stated goal with this vengeance except for extermination given they are literally just killing people? Why do you think the individual Listeners dying to Alethi vengeance should be expected to take responsibility in a way that Alethi should not for chattel slavery? And do you think it is separate from the context that the Alethi are constantly in military engagement? Moreover would it be right for every country in the world with grievances against them to invade Alethkar and kill off its people because Dalinar has committed war crimes all over the place? Saying the Listeners started it doesn't address anything that's happening. There are minerals (gemhearts) being taken from a resource (chasmfiends) only available on Indigenous (Listener) land, and the Listeners are reliant on this resource for their way of life (agriculture). Colonisation in the real world is about forcing things in other nations into commodities, whether it's natural resources (coal, oil, wood, minerals), or labour (chattel slavery, indentured labour). The majority of their race has been taken into chattel slavery, and the remainder are being invaded and having their natural resources taken. I do not know how much more clearly to state what is going on, and what the metaphor is saying. The fact that people are not white in Roshar isn't the point either. The point of bringing up an example of white people invading another place is talking about colonisation to help you understand using real world references, and colonisation was mainly implemented by white countries in the real world. It really does not matter that the Alethi are implied to not be white on Roshar in the text, because the Alethi have taken on the same role that imperial powers descended from the British Empire have in the real world.

No, it has to be everyone because if you don't then yes you are complicit. It's like if your next door neighbour were being lynched and you know you could have done something but ignored it, and then tried to say it wasn't your problem so you shouldn't feel bad. We literally have a teachable moment in the book that I don't want to spoil for OP that talks about this. And who is they? This back and forth is built around how certain sections of a population aren't responsible for the actions of others. Why is the entire Listener nation deserving of extermination [including all future Listeners who may have been born] and their lands raided of goods meanwhile Dalinar who is a literal war criminal is deserving of rehabilitation? Some of this can be attributed to the Thrill, but the Alethi leadership have been nationalists who believe it's one rule for their light eyes and a different rule for everyone else on a pretty deep level. This is a society that technically enforces eugenics on their population via the caste system, which is something we should consider horrific if you consider its implementation in the real world. The point isn't that there's a scene where Kaladin stood there and started whistling while a child was taken. The point is that it is routine practice for parsh slavery in a society that everyone actively participates in. It's something they all know about, ignore, and don't do anything about. The treatment of the parsh doesn't even register for them at this point of the story. Finally, if you voluntarily sign up to a war effort (as opposed to forced conscription) to exterminate another race then yes you need to take some responsibility. There's a huge Alethi military whose sole purpose was to kill all the Listeners and take the gemhearts in their land. It's a metaphor for mineral extraction on Indigenous land. There is literally a genocide, and minerals being forcefully extracted. It's a very very blunt metaphor. Do you not think if there was a voluntary sign up for say, a group of white people in a nation to kill all Indigenous people in another country and taking all of their mineral resources that the people who signed up for it would have some responsibility?

The point of having to accept some responsibility isn't as some kind of sentence or penance, and so it doesn't matter that people weren't personally guilty as individuals for historical genocide and chattel slavery. That's not a relevant answer to colonisation, and it ends up just passing the buck so it's not anyone's responsibility to act. The point is that we exist in a society, and so does Roshar, where the status of people is arbitrarily assigned in terms of property for the purposes of profit. It is everyone's collective responsibility to object to this because if you watch something rust like this continue to happen and do nothing you're implicitly supporting its continuation, but it's also in everyone's interest to object to it. There's a reason that the phrase black lives matter is often extended to all lives can't matter until black lives matter, because in a system where it is morally acceptable that you can assess one life as inherent being of less value than another then that allows anyone fundamentally to be deemed of less value. A society that says Black bodies are disposable for money is probably going to be comfortable saying women's labour and bodies are disposable, for example. It's not a nice way to see other people and that will never change unless something is done about it. If you're a parshmen you get treated as completely disposable [this applies even if you're sentient, since there's a literal extermination and land theft program there in regards to the Listeners], and at varying points in our society slave labour has underwritten specific industries which is implied to have happened on Roshar as well. And let's be clear that even the people who didn't own slaves also seem to have stood by while thing happened like children being stolen right in front of them, or signed up to the army so it's not exactly a hands clean situation anymore than it is here. Meanwhile within the caste system that applies to humans means that dark eyes represent a labour force and fodder for conscription, and so they do have an interest in changing how things are run too. The caste system and slavery needs to be abolished, the regions democratised with equal suffrage, reparations made to the Parsh, and a system of treaties with the different Parsh peoples starting with landback for the Listener nation, and allows for free movement so families can resettle given how they've been broken up by being sold off. The people who need to be pressured to change that are the people in charge. And hopefully the return of Oaths can be part of their journey on this question. But like, over-complicating stuff and thinking of reparations as a First Nations person kicking you out of your house while you are personally named responsible for everything about genocide is wrong. That's a meme spread by politicians that this is what reparations looks like. It's worth reading up on the claims and arguments made by First Nations peoples, whether it's Palestinians arguing for a single secular Palestinian state, Indigenous people in Australia arguing for land rights and treaties, or Black people in the US arguing for reparations and it's not something to be wary of. The reason sci fi and fantasy often have these metaphors about colonisation is to encourage us to look into that kind of thing IMO.

Do you know where it says there are hundreds of millions of people on Roshar? Humans haven't been on Roshar for all that long given the planet itself is only 12-13,000 years old, and it took over two million years for the human population on earth to get to a billion people. IMO either way the fact that just the Alethi soulcasters are able to service the entire army on their own suggests that they could provide enough surplus to accommodate for any shortfalls in the agricultural system and ensure there is plenty for everyone to eat without competition over land and resources. As far as how to kill Odium, overthrow the Fused, and overhaul the nations behind Dalinar IDK how to get into that without spoiling next book for OP.

Sovereignty for the Singers wouldn't mean expelling humans from Roshar. It's not like the majority of individual humans or Aimians own the land right now, either, and with the end of slavery aren't the problem any more than individual white workers are the obstacle for land rights for First Nations peoples in the Americas, Australia, NZ nor does any argument around land rights for First Nations people anywhere include banning immigrants. We shouldn't make it over-complicated in a sci-fi where they literally can have unlimited food and supplies to go around for everyone thanks to Soulcasting. The issues are a) the rulers of the human coalition who need to organise some kind of repatriation and treaty which includes outlawing all forms of slavery, and b ) the majority faction of the Fused/Odium who are effectively conscripting and enslaving huge sections of the Singers. Odium needs to die or leave in order for anything to change, and the humans need to seriously change their system.

You have to let them all go. If you judge them guilty, then the only certainty you have is that you have now created a system of murderers of the innocent and you are one of these perpetrators via a judgement where someone you know was innocent is either executed or indefinitely detained at your discretion. Why is the innocent being condemned worth less than that of the innocent who was first murdered? There is also something to be said that we are witnessing a story of redemption with a murderous butcher like Dalinar being reformed, and so it seems somewhat vindictive to take a retributive approach as if he is the one exception to the rule. People can grow and be better. Even people who've killed. Why not start from that principle with these three hogmen?

Where do we learn this? My understanding was that BAM on her own subbed in for the spren in basically all the gemhearts of the species as there were no voidspren before the Everstorm. I thought that's why trapping BAM put all the parsh into slave form as it stripped their gemhearts of spren all at once.

I don't think Nightblood is anti-investiture - it's just end-negative investiture which is pretty rare in the Cosmere, but also much more effective as a weapon than anti-investiture. Nightblood (like hemalurgy) is of Ruin and interacts with any positive or even end-neutral manifestation of investiture by consuming a portion of it for an effect (powering the sword, powering a single ability) that diminishes over time (black mist leaking, slow expiry of invested spikes), and destroying/dispersing the rest. It just seems to be a matter of scale. And it's pretty versatile as it's been so far confirmed that investiture from Autonomy, Cultivation, Devotion, Dominion, Endowment, Honor, Odium, and at least one other can be 'Ruined'. This is superficially similar to the destructive properties of anti-investiture, but the principles by which this is achieved are quite different. Navani is able to produce anti-lights keyed to the intent of a specific Shard that obliterate that specific form of investiture rather than a broad parasitic kind of investiture that does give access to some powers. This means that a bearer of anti-investiture also does not gain anything at all from what they've done - no talking swords or magical spikes - and needs pretty specific targets. As an example, if you created anti-Voidlight and put it into a Raysium blade then I'm not sure it would do anything at all to the Mist on Scadrial or to the Divine Breath of a Returned. It might just be a normal knife in that situation whereas Nightblood would be damaging to both. The only thing that makes the anti-investiture discovery significant is that there's been a deliberate effort to suppress the spread of knowledge of how to make anything like Nightblood, which is far more dangerous as a weapon than a knife that can functionally only do anything to Fused and Regals one at a time. That might change if Odium cooperates and mass produces Raysium, but yeah, not that similar when you dig into it.

SP3 was my favourite, followed by SP1, and then SP4 as the last. I didn't really wanna spoil myself on SP2. SP3 and SP1 made me feel inquisitive in the sense that I was hunting for easter eggs so the Design stuff was great, but it still feels like a new thing. Whereas SP4 was a story I'm familiar with about a character I'm honestly not super interested in, so I'm going to need to be won over on it because I just don't feel this intense completionist drive about the continuity if that makes sense. As far as it goes if we're talking about Stormlight spin offs I probably would've preferred the Rock novella, the Nighblood book, a book on Ashyn etc.

A Feruchemist on Ashyn could be very potent. You could use the storage of gold to suppress your immune system to get some surges from diseases, and then use the other metals to suppress any symptoms that made you tired, short of breath etc. and then eliminate the disease with your stored health once you'd reached your limit.

Since Sigzil is basically immortal now who knows how long this has been, but I reckon the ability to Skip might at least make him more capable of travelling than Hoid who seems dependent on going through shardpools and who seems to have an ailment where he gets completely frozen for periods of time. He's also a fugitive on the run while Hoid isn't. He has a reason to keep moving and never lay down any roots.

I don't think Auxiliary is an Honorspren, tbqh, or at least not anymore if it was. The surges don't match up, and it's not only not mindless without the oaths, but using powers on its own which even 'alive' spren can't do with the exception of bondsmith spren, and some of the unmade. Possibly Nightwatcher or Sja-Anat further altered his spren beyond the breaking of oaths? Otherwise it could be some next gen Awakened weapon and he has delusions about it being his old spren in the same way that he assumed Kal when the connection was set up - the knight and squire stuff is certainly weird and could be a side effect of a delusional and grieving ex-radiant Awakening an object.

I think in trying to fit together the mysteries around Nightblood it's worth noting that he's not made the nature of Nightblood much of a mystery compared to its story. He's basically got the intent of Ruin from his command, and while it's been fuelled by Endowment, Odium, and presumably Honour's energy that hasn't shifted the intent hence the black mist coming from the blade, the influence the blade has on the mentally unwell, and the destruction of investiture etc. Some of the powers - like Nightblood's ability to Riot people - are probably more associated with the particular metal's interaction with breath, and were it made from iron it probably would suppress emotions. The unbreakability comes from the level of investment. A steel shield or chain mail given the command to protect from evil probably would end up being unbreakable as an invested object, probably riot its user with hope or cowardice or something depending on their persona, be tied to Preservation, and it'd be like the wearer was constantly flaring a-pewter, f-gold, or a-aluminium and you'd become a savant/leak white mist if you kept it on too long. Obviously this isn't rock solid and I'm not putting it out as a hardline argument, but more as a point that I don't think the mechanics of Nighblood are what's obscure because you can currently justify and explain what we know of his powers by what we know about metals, intent, and awakening.

I'm not sure if it bound the Dawnshard since that might be on a bit too big of a scale, but I'm wondering if this is why Midnight Mother fears Lightweavers? Their artistic resonance could be as much of a threat as their illusions in binding her and the essence.

I think we need to be careful not to overstate what was said in the WoB, which doesn't quite say three new star systems. We technically have three new planets or systems, and SP1 and SP3 gives us three new worlds across two new systems. Not to say this is proof that it is Ashyn, but it means that it's not ruled out by the WoB.

I reckon the coat rack 'ailment' is also connected to his kind of immortality, given his prior Dawnshard seems to map onto stasis or eternity somehow.

I guess with the recent reveal in the spoiler stream that it's Stormlight adjacent that it's almost certainly Ashyn.

I think it's worth fleshing out that anarchism and Marxism are competing ideas about how you come to communism - a specific kind of classless society - and that the intention is not to create 'anarchies' and no anarchist would ever describe a regime as an anarchy. I wouldn't define any of those countries as 'anarchies' even in the cases of zones like Spanish Catalonia being run completely along anarchist lines, but I would say that the very strict method of command that you suggest wasn't available and things were fine as a result. In the example of Spain, the revolution generally failed, to be honest, because there were anarchists who sold out the CNT and tried to bring in a coalition with the Stalinists who then got a huge number of anarchists killed, but if the anarchist forces had maintained their offensive we probably wouldn't have seen Franco come to power. That was a political and strategic problem, rather than one to do with them being overly democratic. Whereas in the Ukraine the most effectives militia in the fight against the White movement were linked to anarchists who were elected to the military leadership and were recallable. Anarchists don't advocate disorganisation or just doing things randomly - it's doing things in a clearly democratic and participatory way as opposed in a centralised way. Lots of rules. No validation of unjust authority. But to return to fleshing out the question of communism and what this means in anarchist theory - the literature is also very clear that it cannot happen in isolation. The push for communism needs to come out a general working class push on an international basis because yes there will be invasion, and the strictness of a command structure will not save you. It did not save the Stalinists in Russia. It did not save the parliamentary socialists in Chile. It's only working class power on a mass scale that can do that, and if you don't have a solid base of support then you will lose. Which is where we come to the money and compensation point you've raised, and I think it's important to address an unquestioned assumption here. Compensation - in this vision money - is for things. Money is literally digits of debt between different online bank accounts that we all agree we owe each other to some extent or another as a way to organise trade. I do not pay for healthcare or water or education because that's covered here, and it's simply due to the historical role that agricultural capitalists play that food is marketised for example despite being vital for maintenance of labour force. Things like food, or clothing, or a vaccination are not made of money, and we don't need to have a world built on paying people to have good and pleasant living conditions. We need money now because we're in a capitalist society, and we can't ignore that reality, but it's not some divine requirement for our function as people.

There's nothing to say that anarchism is inherently peaceful in its revolutionary method. The Spanish revolution featured democratic militia as did the Ukrainians during the Russian revolution, and the decentralised and democratic militia in Kurdistan. Meanwhile some of the most centralised armies have actually failed (for e.g the US messed up Vietnam pretty bad, but did not 'win' in the sense you're measuring in these kinds of scenarios), because it's more about tactics, artillery etc. than about whether you have a centralised body for decision making. You also don't need money to make things - what you need is labour and commodities, as well as things needed to reproduce that labour force (healthcare, food, housing, schooling etc.). The rise of the market economy is reasonably recent and pegged to the current mode of production, and while these forms of labour reproduction have innovated since the industrial revolution people practiced them well before rise of currency and market economies. Moreover the motivation of avoiding genocide and enslavement in your scenario definitely seems enough that people would build a road if need be lol people don't just go into a coma without coins. I think that's a supposition, though. There's something to cut against in that we often proclaim that people just are violent, just are going to do things etc. when there's actually not proof for this. Most violence can be connected directly or indirectly with oppression or exploitation. This is why I say it's not a given that everything is some fantasy if you get rid of these issues, but that it is possible and we should not accept the 'it seems unlikely' as a self-evident truth. And I guess on being contrarianism it depends on the target, really. It's usually one person creating a lot of extra work for another person for entertainment's purposes rather than a mutual inquiry. Perhaps if you're of a mind to encourage inquiry it could be worth applying that devil advocacy and exploration to your own assumptions and research some of the things I pointed out too. Sharing is caring after all!