Cocoa

How do you think the Final Desolation would have progressed had the Alethi managed to prevent the summoning of the Everstorm, either through managing to get to Eshonai before she assumed Stormform and negotiate an end to the war or through managing to kill enough stormform Listeners at the Battle of Narak to drop them below the critical mass needed to prevent its summoning? Even before that point, Taln had returned (which now appears to have been because of Chana eventually breaking after Shallan killed her), so it seems like the Desolation was already in motion. For that matter, why do you think we didn't see more activity from Odium's forces prior to the summoning of the Everstorm, if the normal condition of 'get one of the Heralds to breaks so that you are released from Braize' had already been met?

Thank you very much for sharing these! I've been trying to track down information on the unseen order oaths in general and the Elsecallers in particular for a while now, but details have been scant. This is exactly the sort of list I've been looking for.

High odds.

Do we know this for sure? I know that there's a bit in the Diagram about realizing the Shin have the Honorblades and thinking to make a weapon out of Truthless, which would seem to imply that it was written before Szeth killed Gavilar. Likewise, I can't remember anything in Gavilar's prologue that outright prevents Taravangian from having already visited the Nightwatcher. It's possible that he went to her not in response to Gavilar's assassination, but due to knowledge gleaned from death rattles (we know at the very least that his mother had a death rattle related to the coming of the True Desolation).

Broken link is Jezrien, as this is after he got stabbed with the Raysium knife, breaking the Oathpact (which up to that point had still been technically functional). Taln is the vibrant link since he's the one who never broke his oaths or chose to stop being a Herald. The other eight links are the other Heralds (Battar included) who were still alive but had walked away from their oaths and from Taln. Bear in mind, the Diagram existed with at least the nominal purpose of resisting Odium. Meanwhile, by the point in time during RoW that Dalinar was seeing these Connections, Nale had actually joined forces with the voidbringers. Of the two, Battar was doing a far better job of adhering to the original intent of the Oathpact, so it doesn't make much sense that she'd be the only broken link.

This also reminds me a lot of the Pits of Hathsin/the Kandra homeland. Yes, that was because the Scadrian Shards are blinded by concentrations of metal, but we're still looking at two separate cases of A place that has cracks reaching deep into the ground surrounding a Perpendicularity full of bits of metal that hide things from shardic awareness That's one heck of a coincidence, in my opinion.

The whole bit about another having a claim on him is a bit odd, but on the other hand, we saw him stretch. That's the only indication we have of "really, truly dead" in the Cosmere, so I don't think that Brandon is going to have him come back, if only because it would open a whole can of worms that I suspect he as an author really doesn't want to deal with.

As other's have already mentioned, one of the stand-out examples in this book was a sudden shift to things like "dating" and "ex" as opposed to the characters talking about "courting" in earlier books. We're seeing a bit of a shift away from Rosharan-specific profanity. "I'm his therapist" "what's that" "I really don't know." Crass humor (never absent from the Cosmere, but more noticeable in W&W and the later Stormlight books) showing up more frequently. Any one of these, taken by itself, is hardly even worth noticing. Collectively, it makes it feel like parts of the fantasy are being watered down. Not all of them by any means, and it's more like they're weakening than disappearing outright, but the difference is felt all the same. The more the characters and setting lose things that set them apart from Earth (and more specifically, 21st century America), the less it feels like you're actually immersing yourself in the story of another world. None of that's enough to keep me from enjoying the books, but I can honestly say I think I'd enjoy the books more if the characters had hung onto more of the things that mark them as living in another time and place. Honestly, I'm curious how much of it has to do with WaT being written after Tress of the Emerald Sea and Yumi and the Nightmare Painter. Hoid has a very particular style of speaking, narration, and humor, and while I greatly enjoyed those books, it almost feels like Brandon got halfway 'stuck' writing in that style, and it started to bleed into the tone and dialogue of WaT. To a lesser extent, I wonder how much if any of it has to do with Wax & Wayne being written right in the middle of Stormlight. Again, big fan of the W&W books, but they're tonally very different from the first two or three Stormlight books, and then not quite so different from RoW and WaT as that tone starts to shift.

On the one hand, I dislike writing off any character of being beyond the reach of redemption, and I think the themes of SA support that. On the other hand, I think WaT did a pretty good job of driving the final nail (or perhaps gemstone spike) into Moash's coffin, and it's gonna take something big to convince me that he's capable of penitence—not even redemption—at this point in time. We've seen the choices he made after getting his revenge on Elhokar and having the option to step away from the fighting, we've seen the choices he made when Odium was actively siphoning off his emotions and letting him think 'logically,' and we've seen the choices that he made when Odium refused to take away his emotions and let him feel the full fallout of his killing Teft. Consistently, he's made the choices that will let him hurt people, be that an old mad Herald, his old friends and brothers-in-arms, or innocent bystanders like Jeber. He's fallen into the same trap that Sadeas did after Urithiru was discovered and Amaram did at Thaylen field; "I'm going to keep doubling down on my current path no matter what, because the alternative is facing up to the fact that I was objectively wrong and that the pain I've caused was ultimately all for nothing." The antithesis of "Journey before destination." If Moash does get a redemption arc, I suspect it's going to be heavily wrapped up with Gavinor (though that doesn't discount Kaladin from playing a role too, given Moash's status as his foil). Here we have two men that are, at this point, about the same age, who've both sold themselves out to Odium, and who are on opposite sides of a blood feud. Gavinor's driving motivation up to this point has been avenging himself on his father's killer, while Moash's was avenging himself on Elhokar (of whom Gavinor is a splitting image) and by extension his family in exchange for the deaths of his grandparents. If the story themes hold, one of them is going to have to break the cycle, and that's going to either force the other person to confront what they've become and repent, or it's going to cause them to snap and try to kill the one doing the forgiving.

Nobody is going to cotton onto the fact that Kaladin became a Herald during the timeskip, so it'll blindside everyone when he returns. Szeth has lots of sheep. Shallan and Adolin's kid (henceforth called "Yugi Mutou" until we get an actual name) is going to speak like a Cryptic. The math puns, to be clear, not the clicking. Probably. Maybe. Kal and Chana are going to eventually have a very awkward off-screen conversation about her family history as part of his role as divine therapist. Lift will address some of her never-grow-up issues under Zahel's tutelage, but not all of them. Lift and Gift (somehow I'm only just now noticing the rhyme) will court/date at some point during the timeskip. No bet on whether they're still together by book 6. Lift's aviar somehow doesn't die of old age during is still alive after the timeskip. Edit: On it being pointed out, yeah, parrots can live for a while. Lopen becomes the leader of the Windrunners, with a lot of the other old guard being either dead or absent from Urithiru. He's 4th ideal when we see him again but we keep just missing the story of how he swore that oath or the story keeps changing. There's a bunch of Reshi and Herdazians out there living nomadic lifestyles on the backs of greatshells. Thaylenah becomes the unofficial seat of Retribution's new religion, in part due to the people there already following both Vorinism and the Passions.

Whether it noticed Retribution is up in the air, but the Dor—or perhaps more accurately, Sel itself—does seem to be becoming sapient: -From the Arcanum Unbounded essay on the Selish system, emphasis mine.

I'd noticed that too, which was odd to me, because in retrospect there'd be nothing particularly strange about a capital-U Unoathed having a spren and talking to them. It's possible that this is just a cultural miscommunication however, with Scadrians not drawing a fine distinction between Unoathed and people using dead blades the more traditional way.

3. Ishar sent people to retrieve it. Stealing it was the hard part; once you have it, you can just bond it and invisibly carry it back to Shinovar. 4. Everything we saw the Focused Ones do, with their explosive strength coming from coiled ribbons of flesh, was them using Tension. If we're just talking Radiants, then properly-applied Tension can probably be used to control strands of fabric like tentacles, less strong than Plate but more versatile. I also believe you can use Tension to walk on the surface of liquids. 5. We don't know the details, but she seems to have suffered some kind of mental breakdown as a child, and subsequently got to deal with Roshar's subpar understanding of mental healthcare. The most new information we learned in this book was that it apparently happened while Navani was traveling and that on her return things improved for Jasnah. Since her initial thought when her budding radiant bond started making shadows act weird was "not again," we also don't know if this was a mundane mental illness or something more mystical. 6. Almost assuredly, between her and Adolin's almost explicitly having sex after returning to Urithiru, her "cradling" her stomach, and the comment about needing to survive not just for herself. 7. She's probably corporeal (or at least can be corporeal) while she's hiding with the minds of the Heralds in the Spiritual Realm, since Shallan's cryptics and and enlightened spren were all human-sized and able to move things while they were there, like if they were in the Cognitive Realm. 8. Bondsmith Shenanigans. Probably something exceedingly esoteric involving taking their connection to the Cognitive Realm and using it to staple them to the Physical Realm or something. 9. In part, it can be used to force people to pray to him for Warlight, since iirc that can be used to grow crops in the absence of sunlight. It's also possible that it isn't entirely deliberate on his part, it's just a natural result of the interaction between his Shards. 12. Physically: he got Marsh'd. Psychologically: he's doing the same thing that Amaram and Taravangian did before him where they get a chance to just stop (Dalniar's offer of redemption at Thaylen field for Amaram, becoming Odium and therefore being able to call off the war for Taravangian, regaining his emotions for Moash) and instead to choose to double down on their past mistakes, because otherwise they have to fully grapple with the fact that they were in the wrong 14. We have no idea the specifics of this new oathpact, but it's reasonable to assume that the conditions for Retribution reabsorbing the spren is different than the conditions for the Fused escaping Braize. Just from the fact that Ash and Taln are viewpoint characters for two of the back five books, we can be pretty sure that the Heralds will Return at some point. 15. Traditionally you didn't really bond plate the same way you did a blade, you just wore it and used stormlight to power it and repair it. So at this point, with all the stormlight being gone, dead plate is pretty much useless, and unbonded blades just have to be carried around rather than being able to be dismissed and summoned (though I suspect they'll eventually figure out a way to power dead shards with warlight, especially with BAM back in play). Adolin, the Unoathed, and their recovering deadeye partners are something new, which is why they can summon and dismiss their plate like a radiant can and don't need light to power it. 16. Dalinar needed to experience the things he saw in the visions first hand (especially Tanavast's perspective, which the Stormfather would never have shown him if not backed into a corner like he was). If Cultivation had just told him about the history of Roshar, it might have made him think, but it likely wouldn't have given him the understanding that he needed to swear the fourth ideal and take up Honor. Whether or not Cultivation expected him to ultimately give up power like he did is unclear, but from her prompting him to say the Words it's pretty clear that she was trying to shape events so that he would Ascend. 17. Open Stargates Elsegates in exchange for some kind of payment. We don't know what the price is, only that it's something that gives a Shard pause, so presumably it's more than just an ability that needs a lot of voidlight to power. Interestingly, this struck me as similar to how Dakhor teleportation (which presumably uses investiture mechanics similar to the Surge of Transportation) requires a human sacrifice. 18. Same thing as the other oaths. Give you a burst of power (apparently a really big one) when you swear it, makes your body better at holding stormlight, and makes your healing and surges more energy-efficient. 20. The Honorspear, Kaladin's Herald empowerment, and whatever's going on with Syl apparently inheriting a portion of the Stormfather's power and authority. Those are the immediately obvious places that the power went, though I wouldn't put it past Brandon to have this be a Chekhov's gun and that there's more going on with the escaped power than we've seen so far. Could go either way. 21. Probably not. Assuming that the new Oathpact doesn't protect the Heralds themselves from being absorbed, the Powers that make up Retribution might rebel against Taravangian trying to destroy the Heralds. Reforging the Oathpact, at great potential personal cost, in order to protect the spren was an intensely Honorable action, and as we saw with Sja-Anat and Leshwi, the Shard Odium actually likes being challenged to a certain degree even when it goes against the will of the vessel. Put those two together and Retribution would probably resist destroying the Heralds outright.

I'm starting to wonder about that too. It fits too neatly with the thing about symmetrical numbers; one, two, four, sixteen all work, but not three. Harmony and Endowment have been able to talk to Valor, but not Honor, Odium, or Hoid. So possibly hiding in plain sight, especially since whatever these 'moon fragments' are have something going on that hides things from Shards. And I can't get out of my head the fiery glowing joints of the Unoathed shardplate. None of the three Rosharan Shards have investiture colored like that, especially since it was mentioned before Dalinar even ascended, so where's the power coming from? There's something else weird about Rosharan cosmology, and that's whatever's going on with Braize's core. A metal that draws in investiture, turning the whole planet into a soul-trap. Reminds me way too much of Canticle, with its hyperdense core and sunlight investiture circuit, to just brush off the similarity. Not 100% sure that it has a direct connection with the fourth moon and the Shattered Plains, but it might.

I suspect that Cultivation was legitimately blindsided by Dalinar's Retribution gambit and hit the panic button, mostly because of what Hoid says at the end about it being an almost-impossible-to-see route among infinite possibilities. She might have been aware of it, but I don't think she was gambling on it the same way she was when trying to create Todium, in part because Todium was already a gamble on a minuscule possibility, and events playing out as they did would have required not only that plan succeeding but also that it would ultimately backfire with her failing to convince him to see things her way. Impossible plans within failures within impossible plans. I don't know whose side she'll be on (other than her own) when she next shows up, but I expect that she'll be much more reactive and will be repurposing old plans and preparations to adapt to unforeseen circumstances, rather than having Retribution dancing in the palm of her hand.