Argent

I wouldn't put any significance to it. One of the ways authors, Brandon included, make sure readers don't get confused is to create names that not only sound different, but also start with different letters. So given a fairly large cast, we can expect a roughly normal distribution of names' first letters in each book.

Yea, I started a reread of Words of Radiance a few days after my initial breeze through it, and I find myself appreciating the linguistic worldbuilding much more. Every time I see a Thaylen name I go "of course it would look weird to outsiders, it's written like this in their native language!" I also understand why men generally don't bother learning the Alethi glyphs - because of those "screw you lines", which is now now official canon term. I wouldn't feel bad about not figuring them out before Words of Radiance - we had nothing that suggested a logical approach. It was the Frostlands map that was the key - from Thaylen letters, to Alethi words, and then to the glyphs. Without the Thaylen alphabet we couldn't have figured out anything. P.S. "Navani's big burny "thath"" must always be mentioned with context from now on.

Well, there goes that theory. The question now is, who did? Because I am pretty sure Taln appeared with his Honorblade.

"YOU HAVE KILLED HER"

The red light is probably a better symbol for Odium, given the red lightning and the red eyes. You would think that a captured stormspren, a spren that looks like a red lightning, would retain at least its primary color when captured in a gem, but Eshonai makes no mention of red in her description of the sphere - and it feels like she would have, considering how unnatural this would look to her. I guess what I am saying is that she wouldn't describe something as odd as red smoke as just "smoky."

It was it was implied, if not outright said, that Shallan's need to draw things is a crutch. She should be able to create illusions without having to draw them first, but she is still too new to Lightweaving.

The thing is, if you put Dawnshards in the same group as Honorblades and Shardblades, you immediately turn the "both voidish and mortal" into a statement of comparison to the other items in the same set. So, if you say that Dawnshards can bind both, you imply that Honorblades bind one, and Shardblades bind the other; which doesn't seem to be the case, as neither Blade actively binds creatures, as far as we know at least. Honorblades presumably do what they do because Honor created them this way, and Shardblades don't really bind anything, they are bonded with (Knights Radiant bond with their spren, which in turn can transform into Shardblades).

There is something to this. I think I am persuaded that the Unmade are not just spren (and if you refer to my, now edited, write-up, you will see I consider the idea that they are merely-spren like, or even Splinters that are not necessarily spren), but something much more akin to... not a Herald, but a Radiant whose Nahel bond has progressed very very far. I feel a symbiosis here, or maybe even a parasitic relationship, in which the candidate-Unmade provides the physical body, and Odium supplies a certain type of voidspren that starts to co-inhabit the body in some way.

I've got a couple of bones to pick with this. First, Shallan kills her mother when she is 11, not 6 - the event itself took place about 6 years ago. Also, Gavilar's peace treaty with the Parshendi was another event took place about 6 years ago, and it was around that time that Jasnah first saw Ivory. So while Shallan had established her bond before Jasnah, the difference is not that drastic (I doubt Shallan would've been able to play with Surgebinding for too long before her mother reacted the way she did).

Hmm. It really looks like those glyphs in the outside border denote distance somehow. We can't see anything interesting on the y-axis, but the x, both top and bottom, follows a distinct pattern (see annotated map): a "double glyph" (blue) in the middle, followed by three "regular glyphs," (not colored) followed by a single "sharp glyph," (green) followed by an unknown number of "regular glyphs." For the most part we only see what I imagine is the lower half of each glyph, so it might actually be impossible to figure out what they say, but maybe the ones right in the corners will reveal enough for us to figure out (some part of) their meaning.

Fair enough on the smoke point. Though I will argue that it's neither this, nor that - neither Surgebinding-specific, nor Voidbringing-specific. It's a little difficult to make a case for this point, considering how little evidence we have, but I believe that Ten Essences are used in both (likely in all three) magic systems on Roshar. Perhaps the strongest support I have for this is how magic works on Scadrial - all three of the Metallic Arts use the same foci, but they use them differently. I doubt the Unmade is a term used to collectively describe all voidspren. The fact that we have names for at least a few of them suggests individuality.

In The Way of Kings, Dalinar's final vision has the Almighty tell him "Odium has killed me." Given the circumstances, I am willing to give some authority to the guy who got murdered when he is talking about who killed him.

Yea, that's a pretty colossal stretch.

I've been talking about this on and off in different threads, but I wanted to make an attempt to put my thoughts together in a cohesive manner and maybe create something I can call a theory. Perhaps not a terribly groundbreaking* one, but at least it will be all official. I believe the beings the Pershendi call their gods are the Unmade. There are two, maybe three, pieces of evidence I find significant here. First, there are forms the Parshendi refer to as "forms of power" - stormform being the one we see, but it is strongly implied that smokeform and decayform are two of the others. If stormform is any indication, those forms of power give certain abilities to the Parshendi, allowing them to perform feats of magic similar (in magnitude, not direction) to what the Surgebinders can do. In other words, listeners who embrace those forms turn into Voidbringers, creatures whose (primary) Investiture comes from Odium. This is never stated explicitly, but the destructive capacity and emotional direction of those forms and their Rhythms is as clear of an evidence as I can hope for. I find this an important, though perhaps a little obvious, point to make because it segues into the other beings we are almost entirely certain belong to Odium - the Unmade. We still know very little of the Unmade, but it seems like they are fixed in number (10), powerful, and spren-like - if not outright spren. They have unique names, personalities, and powers, and are capable of seeing the future to a varying degree. Assuming Taravangian is correct in his knowledge of the Unmade's spren-like nature, it's very likely that they can be trapped in gems, just like ordinary spren. When Eshonai examines the stormspren captured by her sister, she sees a "smoky creature moving about inside [the gemstone]." Since this is at least the second time we see smoke associated with Odium (the Midnight Essences being the other one), we can reasonably assume that it, and perhaps darkness, are (side) effects of his Investiture. Now, to the juicy bits. The sphere Gavilar gives to Szeth is described as black, somehow glowing with dark light. This is no smoke, it's straight-up darkness. Considering that this sphere is very likely related to his plan to bring back the Parshendi gods, plan that earned him a very quick assassination, we can imagine that it was directly related to them - either directly (i.e. the black sphere was the instrument that would bring back those gods) or as a stepping stone (i.e. the existence of this sphere, and whatever Gavilar meant to do with it, could or would lead to the return of those gods). By Occam's Razor, the first option seems more likely - and simplifying things even further, it's possible that the sphere contained one of their gods. How do we go back to the Unmade from here? Simple. In I-4: The Last Legion, Eshonai tells her mother that "dabbling in things we shouldn't, things that might bring the eyes of the Unmade upon us." She is concerned that embracing even a single form of power by a single listener will be enough to draw the attention of Unmade. She expresses pretty much the same concern to a few other people, only using the phrase "listeners' gods" instead of "the Unmade," very strongly suggesting that the two are the same. So the Unmade are related to stormspren, which are a type of voidspren, which in turn seem related to Gavilar's sphere, which is related to the Parshendi gods - and we've made a full circle, which validates the theory in my eyes. There is also the thing about the various Rhythms the Parshendi can attune to and listen to at will. From what I understand, they are like... well, rhtyhms, melodies without words, playing on demand in each listener's mind. Kind of like different radio stations, actually. Those Rhythms, and especially the new ones Eshonai discovers, are what governs communication and, to a lesser extent, behavior among the listeners. I have another theory, based on two recent Words of Brandon, saying that the Parshendi "weren't originally" of neither Cultivation nor Odium - implying that at some point they were Invested by either one of those Shards. My theory posits that it was Cultivation who uplifted the original Parshendi, creatures not very different from the modern day parshmen, by Investing them in a way that allowed them to attune / listen to different... Shardic wavelengths (see spoiler if you want), one of which is the Rhythm of Peace. If this is correct, then the new Rhythms (such as the Rhythm of Craving) are just Odium's radio stations, his wavelengths (and if the Rhythm of Peace comes from Cultivation, it is no wonder that Eshonai hears screaming when she attunes to it while in stormform). Which could be tied to the Unmade instead of the Shard directly. I admit, I haven't entirely thought this part through, so I have only a general idea about my argument... which is why it looks so all-over-the-place when you read it =\ The Well of Ascension / The Hero of Ages Spoilers As a final piece of supporting evidence, we know that Amaram was planning something with Gavilar - in secret - on the night the Alethi king was murdered. We don't know what, but Amaram's current plans include the forced summoning of a Desolation, which (he believes) would in turn summon the Heralds back. His chapter suggests that he is still following the original plan he had made with Gavilar, so it makes sense for Dalinar's brother to have been in possession of a captured Unmade, a creature I envision as a lieutenant of some sorts in Odium's army. TL;DR Version: Odium's Investiture seems to manifest as smoke and darkness. Eshonai was concerned that the smoky stormspren (a type of voidspren) and the stormform could bring the Unmade. She expressed similar concern on the night of the peace treaty when Gavilar shared his plans with the Five, except the subject of her concern were her gods and instead of a gemstone seeming filled with smoke, we have one that glows with darkness. Given how similar the two situations are, I find it safe to assume that Gavilar's voidsphere contained a being more powerful than Venli's stormspren, which was directly related to the Parshendi gods - in all likelihood by being one of them. Which, to complete the similarity between the two situations, would be the Unmade. * If you think about this, it's a really clever pun. You know, because the Parshendi now live in the Shattered Plains, where the ground is broken...

Hard to judge, as I keep comparing it to the time when the site was sick

What?

The (cartographer's?) signature near the bottom right corner is the only thing I had noticed. I wonder about the star / compass though...

I theorized something similar, but it's a dead end for now. My idea was essentially that the Iriali have two different pieces of lore mixed up a little - the Shattering of Adonalsium and the creation (or migration) of humans throughout the cosmere. Ym refers to the Fourth Land, in which the Iriali currently live (which could mean either the Shardworld Roshar or a region of the supercontinent Roshar), and the Seventh Land, in which the One will reform - which could be a reference to Yolen (where Adonalsium was Shattered), but at this point theorycrafting gets really muddy. I am unreasonably giddy that "godspren," the term I coined, has caught up at least a little in these forums. I felt similarly when somebody used "Sprenblade" to refer to a Radiant's "living" Shardblade.

There is one with all of the Orders and Surges labeled, but I don't know which thread I saw it in...

Shallan's was a product of Lightweaving. Dalinar has no access to the surge of Illumination, and he was also asleep.

This could be explained differently in the cosmere, though - your blood seems to be the source of your connection to your spiritual aspect (and so Hemalurgic spikes need to touch blood in order to steal pieces of your sDNA). I agree that it might be a bit of a stretch, however.

I don't think the Returned need to breathe - though they probably do, out of habit.

I actually spent some good 5 minutes trying to come with a good equivalent from the Rosharan fauna, but ultimately decided to that I don't know enough about it to translate it well.

The thing that I reacted the most to in your write-up was the fact that you were sunburnt. When it snows in Chicago. Again.

It's all speculation at this point.