AquaRegia

You've been saying this for a while now. I'm not convinced, but if it DOES turn out to be true, you will be entitled to one ENORMOUS "told you so". Is Radiant letting her hair be red these days? I recall her being blonde.

The Fused and the Heralds definitely have a collective sanity problem. In one case, it's being literally thousands of years old, unable to die and driven to unending war, and in the second, it's all of that PLUS some cumulative magical effect (WoBs on this, I'm pretty sure) that likely started around the time of the Recreance / the capture of Ba Ado Mishram. So you are not wrong there. Spren? They sure are crazy; I hope we get more explanation why going forward, but for now it's a given that "they are just weird". The general "Roshar Crazy", I think, can be at least partly explained by the influence of the Unmade. Nergaoul has been infecting Alethkar and Jah Keved with The Thrill for generations. Moelach and Ashertmarn have similarly been wandering around for centuries, causing region-wide insanities. We've had strong hints that at least one has ensnared Shinovar, and there are several for whom we have no idea what they are currently up to, but I'm 100% sure it's NOT GOOD for sanity. I'd add Navani to the "not-crazy" list, and Rysn, and Lift, and Gawx. Maybe also Jasnah; weird? Yes. But not "crazy".

YES to everything @yulyulk said. I really enjoyed Venli's scenes. I find her, with her fears, her pettiness, her wavering self-esteem, to be a very relatable and "real" feeling character. Much more so to me than someone like Adolin - brave, self-assured, thoughtful, kind, unfailingly empathetic and supportive? Don't get me wrong, I love him and wish he were my best friend, but he's not like ME. I'm definitely more like Venli. I've been ego-driven and in love with my own cleverness. I've been selfish and self-seeking. I've been motivated by fear. I've made bad choices and hurt people who loved me; I've had to work though the resulting pain and feelings of shame; and I've found ways to forgive, be forgiven, and try to do a little bit better today than I did yesterday. Venli's whole character arc feels very real to me. Also, from a narrative point of view, I think we as readers need someone like Venli - a sort of spy or "double agent" among the Fused, allowing us a view of what they think and what they are up to. Someone who's in their confidence to some degree, but not loyal to their side. I desperately want to understand more about the Fused, Voidlight, the history of the Singers and Odium and Honor, and I was happy that Venli gave us an inside track to some of that. Otherwise, the Fused remain a black box of mysterious unknown "bad guy"-ness. And we definitely need viewpoint characters who represent what is probably the most common drive in any war - to find a way OUT, to just be left alone and not have to fight for (or against) anybody.

Thank you for that, @Jozomby - that's exactly what I needed. An explanation that kind-of makes sense, yet kind-of not, followed by "hey, that's why I write fantasy and not hard SF". And that's good enough. It's so easy for me to get wrapped up in those "real-world" logical details that I fail to enjoy the stories.

@Kingsdaughter613 is correct. The text (ch. 116) strongly supports the position that El is using Anti-Voidlight for the very first time, and The Pursuer Defeated One is the very first test subject: Neither Raboniel nor El were aware of the existence of Anti-Investiture before the event of RoW. We have no way of knowing yet how Gavilar came in possession of both Voidlight and Anti-Voidlight, but it seems clear to me that it WASN'T from the Fused.

I apologize if this has been hashed out already, but my brief attempts at searching the forums didn't turn anything up. Feel free to point me to relevant old topics. I got from the novels that the Final Empire was in the far northern latitudes of Scadrial, but apparently Brandon has stated unequivocally that is was located AT THE NORTH POLE. This raises a serious question for me. My impression, from multiple reads of the MBe1 trilogy, is that our beloved characters experience a familiar cycle of day and night, with not much in the way of seasonal variation. This is simply not possible if you live on the north pole. If your planet has a tilted axis of rotation, like Earth does, you'll get half a year of continual daylight, followed by half a year of darkness; I do not believe this is supported by the text. If your planet's axis is perpendicular to its orbital plane, the sun will neither rise nor set, but circle the horizon once per day. Also, unsupported by the text, I think. How can this be resolved?

ZOMG Is there a university that awards PhDs for this kind of critical research? I very much hope you find it (assuming you are not already enrolled).

May I just say I LOVE this topic. I had exactly the same reaction: "wait, 16% ≠ 1/16 ... how BOTH? There is something vaguely unsatisfying about this math." @Eri and @Oltux72 put WAY more thought into it than I did, and I thank you both.

It's not like he MURDERED Evi. He didn't know she was in the city when he... you know, did that war crime. It was an accident. Everybody in Alethkar who wanted to know about it already knew about Rathlas - that was the whole point of doing it. He was a soldier, and you don't make an omelette without breaking eggs and yada yada. An analogy: let's say pilot of the Enola Gay found out after the bomb dropped that his wife was, against all odds, in Hiroshima that day. Yes, he and his family might have some feelings to work out, but I really don't think anyone would suddenly see him as a murderer - at least, not any more than they already did. Maybe the real question is why don't more people ALREADY hate Dalinar for what he's done? I think we are asked to accept that those close to him can see him honestly trying to be a better person each day, and writing Oathbringer is part of that.

Opinion is definitely divided on this question. I agree with @Seloun - the Diagram fulfilled its part of the deal, and was disbanded, so the Kharbranth safety clause should still be in effect. I think it's definitely possible that this deal will wind up tying Todium's hands in some important way. A slightly more recent discussion:

@Bzhydack thank you! Now I'm forced to retract much of my previous position. But I'm still troubled by how easily those Rosharan gems seem to break.

No, these are large rubies, given to Taravangian by Renarin, which contain Enlightened spren from Sja-Anat. I'd think the protective mother would use good-quality gems to transport her precious children. Of course, anything can be broken, including gemstones. But the ones we are talking about - diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires - they are some of the hardest and toughest materials known. That's part of the reason they are prized as jewelry. There are a lot of conflicting reports about just how easily they break, but the first result I found when I searched "do rubies break" was, from a luxury jewelry website: I'm skeptical that it would be easy to shatter an Earth ruby by throwing it against a crem wall; Szeth does it twice in a row (RoW ch. 113). Navani uses a hammer, but seems like she has no trouble and succeeds on the first try (RoW ch. 97). I think we need to at least consider the possibility that Rosharan gemstones are somehow different than those we see on Earth. Say what, now? How exactly do "we know" this? If true, it's news to me.

That's a good question. Never thought about it, but you are right: It seems they CAN'T be the same things we think of when we say the words "diamond", "ruby" or "sapphire". They are really gemhearts, of course, grown inside native Rosharan animals. Their chemical composition is unknown. More importantly, why'd you want to break a toonie? Didn't you just take something worth $2 and make it worth... $0?

Everything you say may be true... but you are overlooking the most important person who DOES remember: Shallan. It's not just a big deal to her, it's the BIGGEST of deals. She needs to somehow resolve the fact that she is a murderer. She knows it, and WE know it.

Agreed - I don't think she has told anyone yet. Shallan has barely been able to admit it to herself, with Veil and Radiant holding things together while she's off hiding. I expect it will be a big topic in the next book.

Welcome to the madhouse!

I agree with everything @redsoxu571 said. Well stated, and welcome! It's clearly Brandon's intention 1) to be mysterious, and 2) for us to learn a lot more about the Recreance - and the history of Roshar in general - going forward (six more novels' worth!). As he did (is doing) with Shallan's personal history... as he did in Mistborn Era 1, he's a master at making a backstory with MANY layers, and then peeling them back, deliciously, one by one. There is always another secret.

First of all, in case anyone didn't see it, this: In the Stormlight Archive Call to Adventure board game (which I just got for my b-day), one of the Challenge cards is titled Thwart an Evil Agent , and the picture is of Mraize with his stupid green chicken. Mraize = Agent of Evil, ergo, Thaidakar = EVIL. It's canon. Just saying. Honestly, though, I'm worried. I agree it's unlikely he wants to be the next Lord Ruler of anything, based on what we know of his personality, but we don't know really know what he DOES want. I hope I don't have to root against Kelsier... but I'm preparing myself to do so. I would love to watch him join forces with the Knights Radiant and bring his considerable skills to bear in defense of protecting the innocent and freedom for all on behalf of the whole Cosmere, but I think it much more likely that Kelsier, just as Hoid said he would, just as Taravangian DID, will be perfectly willing to sacrifice all the people he doesn't know in order to buy safety for those he does. And I think that's going to be a big problem for me. I think the most we can say right now it that those things WERE true - several hundred years ago. We don't have much to base their CURRENT truth on, and the impressions we get of Thaidakar through Mraize, in my mind, do not support them very strongly. Hopefully, that's Brandon's intention, and we'll be pleasantly surprised once the real Thaidakar is revealed. But I'm not ready to bet that way yet.

These are excellent questions, and I don't know enough to help pin down the answers. My gut feeling is that the first item above is closer to the truth; we know an Invested Cognitive entity can persist for a while (before going to the Beyond) after all Connections are severed, and we also know that the Heralds do not require a constant influx of Investiture to continue existing. So at this point I'd lean in favor of "the dagger severs a Spiritual Connection"... but I agree we have a lot to learn about both the process of trapping a spren in a gemstone and exactly how those Raysium daggers work. Also, no, I don't think a regular non-Invested human would be affected in any odd way, just a regular old stabbing. But I'd guess an Invested Radiant would be drained of Stormlight.

The fact that both Kalak and Raboniel explicitly and matter-of-factly describe what happened to Jezrien as a "capture" ("collection", "harvest", etc.) makes me very confident that is exactly what was intended. I find it very unlikely that Leshwi was not aware of this - otherwise, how would she have known to recover the knife with the now super-valuable-Herald-containing-gemstone in it? What if Moash tossed it in a rock pile, or tried to keep it? I think the obvious explanation is that Leshwi simply didn't want Moash to know that a "cognitive capture" was the actual objective, preferring for him (and us, as readers) to view it as a simple murder. No Anti-Investiture was involved. I don't think Raboniel had ever even HEARD of Anti-Investiture at this point. Her first inkling that it exists comes from Navani's experiments later on. She knew that the Raysium dagger would conduct Investiture, and that gemstones could be used to capture spren, and she really wanted it to work for Heralds. She is later stunned by Navani's synthesis of Anti-Investiture, and sees it as a NEW way to end the war.

The Epigraphs from Kalak's journal (as noted above) make it quite clear that the Fused were trying to capture Jezrien, not kill him. I suppose it's possible Kalak BELIEVES this to be the case, but is mistaken... but I think he is correct. The dagger given to Moash by Leshwi is never described as having the anti-light glow or warping appearance, and he notes the gemstone is faintly glowing after the deed is done.

Moelach is the third of the "Mindless Unmade". https://coppermind.net/wiki/Moelach

Certainly this is true, but it doesn't answer the question "how do Rosharans even know what aluminum is?" Here on Earth, it took 60 years of trying by the smartest chemists to make any (1820s), and another 60 years before it was commercially available (1880s). Given what we see of the state of Rosharan science and technology, no native Rosharan should even expect it to exist. Worldhoppers importing it from Scadrial, Silverlight, or elsewhere clearly must be part of the explanation. I wonder if we will ever know the full story. That said, back to the OP. Brandon has created fictional elements for all the other God Metals we've seen - Atium, Lerasium, Raysium. If Adonalsium has a God Metal, it seems unlikely that it would be something as mundane as aluminum. While aluminum IS difficult and costly to make, it's hardly the MOST difficult or costly... and my understanding is that God Metals can't be "made" at all; they are not "normal" matter, but rather solid deposits of Shard Investiture.

Hello, little friend! Welcome to the Shard. People do indeed read these introductions. I have MANY guesses for your Who´s that Cosmere Character... I will think on it and try to narrow it down before guessing.

I agree. Glys - in keeping with the whole future-sight theme - speaks almost exclusively in future tense; "you will" or "it will", rather than "you are" or "it is".