Returned

I think Dalinar accepted that his information was incomplete and was going to remain that way. Sending a mundane soldier to physically trek through the forbidding mountain peaks around Urithiru, into a fortified location he believes may be under enemy influence and which is already sending reports that everything is mostly OK, seems like a mediocre plan at best. If an enemy has enough control to hold the tower, send false reports, and suppress Radiant powers, what is a random soldier wandering inside going to accomplish and why would that soldier's report be trustworthy? Even worse, what would Dalinar be able to do even if he could confirm that Urithiru had been taken? His army was stuck in an engagement with an enemy army (by the enemy's design), and the Oathgate (even if unlocked) doesn't seem like a good option if the whole city is occupied. Maybe I'm not imagining the same sort of plan as you, and so I'm missing something you intend. Even if he did as you described, how would that be conclusive for him? What would the outcome be except more false reports and continuing suspicions? What actions could he have taken even if he were able to confirm that the Fused had conquered it? That's how I think of it, anyway. Dalinar is an excellent military strategist and tactician, and he knew and accepted the limits of his information and ability to act on information in that scenario.

It seems to me that the entire body goes in. Again, consider Nergaoul: "physically" huge in size and with a substantial effect when not contained, but wholly contained in a gemstone (in the physical realm) and no longer exerting its effects afterwards (the Thrill vanished). It's the latter part that makes me think there isn't any "overflow" from inside the gemstone to anywhere else. It seems to me that the gemstone trapping imposes enough physicality on a spren to fully contain it. Whether or not a spren cares about that doesn't seem to me to be about physical space concerns (for example, when Syl was confined to a cabin on the Honorspren ship she wasn't in an oubliette, but she still didn't like being stuck in a room). I'm not sure that, in the physical realm, spren care about size or space constraints or can feel cramped, but maybe I'm forgetting some scene or descriptions about it. My impression is that spren size in the physical realm is more like an incidental expression than it is a real, inherent physical property. But that's just my impression. (Also, for the record Cryptics can change their size in the physical realm, we see Pattern do it when he picks locks and, more pedantically, when he changes from 3D to flat-- it's being invisible that they can't do. But I think there are spren who cannot change their size or shape, so the point is well taken). Frustration's comment about Ba-Ado-Mishram being inside of a gemstone in the spiritual realm also seems like evidence in the "fully contained" direction, and although she did have some interaction with Renarin and Rlain I'd chalk that up to spiritual realm oddness instead of the gemstones being less confining.

I'm not totally sure it would work in the CR. Paired gemstones seem to have strong physical character (based on Navani's experiments), and we know that distance eventually causes the connection between fabrials based on gemstone pairing to weaken or fail. Physical distance isn't consistent in Shadesmar, so I wonder if the paired properties of gemstones apply there in a way similar to how they behave in the physical realm. Maybe they'd work less well, or maybe better. It does seem like the embassy should have had a way to communicate with Urithiru if possible, so that they did not carry spanreeds suggests that they don't work properly in Shadesmar. I agree that it seems likely that the entire spren is inside of the gemstone. "Inside" seems like a physical property, and that's consistent with what we observed with Nergaoul in Oathbringer. Though, on the last point, do we have any indication that spren care about their physical size? The Sibling's concerns seem relevant, but in the physical realm they don't have bodies in the same sense that physical beings do. Syl doesn't seem to care if she's large or small. I'm drawing a blank on any examples of how that might work in the Cognitive Realm, though-- spren bodies don't seem very plastic there, so maybe there's a cognitive element that is important.

The "not through the Diagram" piece is what I was referring to. He may have succeeded in his goal, but not through his plans (at least, as he understood them). Hence the "plans didn't work" comment. We can't rule out that the true plan, devised by the ultra-brilliant Taravangian, was exactly what ended up happening, however difficult that may be to believe. But less important that Alethkar and Jah Keved, which are famed for having the best soldiers and most expansive militaries in the world. Most of Roshar is not accessible by boat. The navy matters and is an important military target (as you say), but it's not as important a military to control in pursuit of conquering Roshar, which is what I was trying to describe. Edit: I don't mean to suggest that Thaylenah has an incompetent or ineffective military, but rather that it probably wouldn't be the first one to take command of for someone who wants military dominance. Important, but less so than Alethkar and Jah Keved.

It's always frustrating and tricky to evaluate anything based off of the Diagram because it's more detailed and dense than we can comprehend (maybe we can identify with Taravangian and company on that!). So we always have the possibilities that the Diagram was wrong, that it was right but misinterpreted by its followers, that it was right but didn't have time to come to fruition, and other issues surrounding our indefinable lack of knowledge about it. Here are a couple of considerations/guesses: Taravangian's plans ultimately didn't work: he wasn't the king of everything, and so his imagined deal with Odium didn't work out as he had originally intended. It didn't even work for nations he actually was king of, like Jah Keved. So we should be careful of thinking that every single move was perfect and precise. He couldn't do everything at once (he often complained about lacking time), so "why not X?" might be better looked at as "why not X yet?". I tend to view the Diagram as less about making nothing but decisive moves than it was about playing the odds to create circumstances that he could later exploit in ways that were favorable to him. When there was a decisive opportunity, he took it, but there also seemed to be a lot of conditionality in predictions. Lots of contingencies, essentially, so that he could make the best possible decisions depending on how certain events played out. That he could have become Prime (if, indeed, he could) is probably less important than making sure that he became Prime in an appropriate way at an appropriate time. His schemes missed quite a bit, almost certainly including Szeth's death and rejection of being Truthless. They were also cut short (or seriously diverted by events). There is no reason to think that he had fully completed the waves of assassinations and subsequent machinations he had planned out, so perhaps Iri and Theylenah were spared because the plans were disrupted. Taravangian didn't want a shattered Alethkar, he wanted a whole one that he could control indirectly (by controlling Dalinar, which seems to have been his original plan) or directly in some other way. Dealing with ten Highprincedoms seems harder and worse than one single nation, though I have to think that Taravangian would have plots and plans for dealing with such a thing were it really more attractive to do so. As it was, Dalinar sidelined Elhokar and effectively ruled the nation anyhow. Removing Elhokar as a figurehead would probably have upset that. It was only when Dalinar turned away from the "path of the warlord", and therefore became a rival to him, that Taravangian sent Szeth to kill him. Taravangian's assassinations were widespread and (apparently) carefully chosen and planned, presumably to cause chaos and unease but also to create conditions that he could further exploit to achieve his ends. Paralyzing Azir by ensuring that the most capable candidates for Prime didn't want the position (because of fear of more assassination) may have pushed it into the state he wanted. Taravangian went to an enormous amount of trouble to hide his ultimate goals, such as being crowned king of Jah Keved "by accident". It was important to his schemes that he be seen as nonthreatening and something other than a power-hungry conqueror. Explicitly claiming the office of Prime wouldn't work well with that (even if it were legally possible, which it may not have been), while submitting an impossibly great essay would destroy his image as a doddering, kindly old man. For all we know, that was his ultimate plan but it had to come later when subterfuge was no longer necessary. He made use of the tensions caused by no one knowing who had hired the Assassin in White. We know very little about international relations and politics prior to the coming of the Everstorm, and even less about internal considerations for basically everywhere except Alethkar and Jah Keved. If we assume that the plan the Diagram outlined was pretty good, and that the participants in the conspiracy were doing an adequate job of decoding it, then we must also assume that these sorts of issues weren't oversights. Taravangian's early efforts were to control the most militarily powerful nations on Roshar. Maybe that was coincidence, but to me it suggests that military conquest was the route to becoming king of at least some places. But you aren't going to start with Theylenah for that, or even the regionally fractious Azir.

Delays happen and we are generally told about them, as well as other updates on his writing progress. But he's also shown that he is pretty good at sticking to his release schedules, sometimes perhaps to the books' detriment. Delays to his book releases are kind of a mixed thing for me. I think that his aggressive schedule and efforts to follow it have demonstrably led to less polished releases, and those books would really have benefitted from more writing time. But when delays are from ever more projects it seems like more writing time and attention won't be the result. In short, I'm not worried about the books being finished so much as I'm worried about them being given too little attention on their way to becoming finished. Every side project that comes up, especially big ones not totally under his control, do increase my worries about this.

I hadn't thought about it that way, but that sounds like a reasonable explanation to me. The scene didn't bother me, so maybe I'm easy to satisfy, but the only thing about the shower sequence that made it stand out for me is how unusual such a scene is in Cosmere books generally. That's probably what makes those scenes feel so disjointed to me: characters don't really have much... nonviolent, interpersonal physical activity. They don't do much kissing, there's little physical contact between them, and they don't even have very much physical attraction or response described. So to go from almost no interactions or content in that mode to giggling together in the shower, or hammock, or wherever, just feels abrupt. For Straff I read every scene involving his mistresses/slave victims as expressing how violent, cruel, vicious, and self-centered he is. Wrapping those traits in sexual encounters made them more visceral and impactful for me, in ways that simple narrations and his other actions didn't really convey. I didn't like those scenes, but I did think they were effective in demonstrating Straff's awfulness in ways that were distinctive. And even then they were not all that explicit or detailed. I put them on the same level as the scene in which he kills Amaranta: brutal, awful, and very much an expression of Straff himself. Not strictly necessary, maybe, but evocative. The Queen Fen scene just didn't bother me, or really even register for me. They might as well have been sitting in a dining room, wearing more clothing than ever, for all the detail or impact it had. Instead it had maybe four references to her being nude and some barely-veiled references to what she and her consort get up to (which itself is no surprise, given that he is her consort). I never even read it as a sex scene until re-reading it in response to this thread; I'd thought the scene was after they were done with everything and maybe cuddling a bit, but I think it's more than fair to read it differently (especially with Kmakl's comment on page 139). Awfully mild either way. But if it bothers you, because of the nudity or anything else, it bothers you. At least those sequences are rare and brief.

None of these books were written to please and fully satisfy any one person, specifically. That you, personally, don't like it or find it interesting isn't really something that you can call the author to account over. Some people don't like fantasy novels, so most of Stormlight is, for them, unnecessary nonsense. Some people don't like moral philosophy, so the sections of Stormlight that talk about it are, for them, unnecessary diversions. Some people don't like violence, and so the violence in Cosmere novels is unnecessary and bad for them. Some people don't like narrative depth or complexity, and much of Sanderson's writing is tedious or upsetting to them. Some people would find even the mention of sexual activity to be too crass, leaving the suggestion in the OP similarly baffling and upsetting to them as the content you're complaining about. Some people find sexuality to be a fundamental part of human existence, and so not including it for any characters, in any way, ever seems odd and incomplete to them. Especially for characters whose relationships might suggest it is appropriate or expected. Some people find raciness exciting and will like a book better if it includes a bit of it. Sometimes elements like nudity or sex give fuller shape to a scene or theme, suggesting the dynamics of a situation or aspects of characters. I can't tell you why these specific scenes were included. In WaT I don't think that they were done very well, nor did they seem to serve any purpose I could discern (unless it really was just tossed in to appeal to those who might want such scenes). But those issues are not about nudity nor sexuality. I liked well enough the WoA implications between Elend and Vin because they were appropriate to their relationship and contrasted tragically with the grim backdrop against which their marriage took place. It was also extraordinarily mild and far from explicit or detailed, as the citation from Treamayne demonstrates-- it's hard to see that as graphic content that was shoved in the reader's face. Maybe those elements didn't land for you and what little detail was there was too much for you. But calling it baffling and valueless only because you, personally, don't like any amount of that content is an awkward standard to force onto an author.

I wouldn't really call any of those scenes "detailed". They're present, which is a change from most of his novels. I don't recall any comments Sanderson has made about those particular sequences and so I can't give a definitive answer to your question. I do think that "just say[ing] it happened" seems like a pretty awkward thing to write in, even more so than the scenes themselves. I don't see any reason they would come up in dialogue, or how they would be worked into narration while also being totally off-screen given that they are not in any way plot-relevant. Every piece of every book was included by the author for some reason or other, and we don't usually get much specific explanation for why each one was chosen (or omitted). They do give a bit more of a view into characters' lives and relationships, which is worth something even if not very impactful or important. The only book in which it registered for me at all was WaT, and then only because the scenes felt very tacked on. If forced to guess I might think it was a part of working gender and sexuality into WaT more broadly, where those elements have a (small) bit more prominence than in the other books. But that's a weak guess and I don't think that the small handful of references to sex do much in that direction.

"At the highest" is doing some heavy lifting on that low thousands estimate and is suggestive about timing. I'd wager that that number is post-Aharietiam, possibly close to the Recreance, when the Radiants were active and did not have to deal with the Desolations or anything else that degraded the human populations and their infrastructure. The ideas that there were many thousands of Radiants, that they were as capable against the Fused as we've observed, and Aharietiam was one of the worst Desolations ever (per Kalak, I think?) simply doesn't track. So either that WoB is a mistake, Sanderson is lazy and sloppy with the worldbuilding of his flagship series that he's been writing for decades, there are factors in the struggle between Radiants and Fused we aren't aware of or aren't considering, your assessment (and our observations of the Fused's performance) is off, or the highest number of Radiants ever was not typical enough of their forces to govern their conflicts. Take your pick of those options, but at minimum the lattermost seems very parsimonious to me. I also think that the Fused performance estimate is at least incomplete, and that battlefield performance isn't the standard we should be using to evaluate them. Even from Oathbringer on the Fused, while in many ways not very successful, are too much for the Radiants to overwhelm or even control during the war. WaT is really striking in how poorly the Fused fare, especially in Azimir and the Shattered Plains. It seems more plausible to me (and more agreeable) that that book is the piece that doesn't fit well, rather than retroactively unraveling the entire six-millennia backstory and making all of the books nonsensical. New details may shift my thinking, but I'd rather not tank the whole series just to accommodate Sigzil's performance against a listless and incompetent Fused army.

I don't see any obvious reason that it couldn't work, but even if they can it seems like they must be generally less capable of it than humans. We have some precedent for that in the Singers. Spren live in Shadesmar where we have seen humans attract spren readily, but the spren settlements are not overrun with lesser spren all the time. It is interesting that humans seem particularly capable of attracting spren. I wonder why that is.

@Frustration's general considerations seem sound, as usual. But I think that there are two big issues to be aware of when thinking about a specific scenario like this: 1. Taking a keep seems generally not that important in itself in a world with Surgebinders all over the place, or at least we don't know why such a thing might be worth the effort to them (as I mentioned above) and so it's difficult to identify when it would be too difficult to bother with. This is essentially the idea in the OP that it's not clear how the Fused can pose a meaningful threat to Radiant forces. Feverstone might be difficult enough, in this setup, that the Fused would never bother because it is (for all intents and purposes) the case that the Radiants have little to worry about. 2. Humanity never had an easy time of the Desolations, including after the Radiants were established. So even though they ultimately won them all it can't be so lopsided as to be "the Fused basically can't ever win". That leaves either author fiat or considerations that we aren't aware of which make the Fused more capable opponents as explanations for why they weren't blowout victories for the humans. My guess is that it's a mix of both, with the specific detail that tactics favor Radiant forces with high-Oathed members but there are not enough of those high-Oathed members to translate that tactical advantage into a reliable, strategic one. Even to the extent that the Radiants' battlefield advantages are decisive, that just means that the Fused's approach within a Desolation is less likely to focus on the battlefield. And I maintain that the Fused are unlikely to focus much on individual battles, wars, or even Desolations-- that's not the scale on which they're operating. The Fused don't really need to survive engagements, and inflicting casualties and degrading infrastructure advance their goals either way.

I'd been leaning on the "it's much harder to leave Shadesmar than to enter it" thing to disregard the Transportation surge, but I think you're right. That the four third-Oath Willshapers are in the keep is too serious an issue to ignore. If we think we can pick off individual Radiants, they should be on the list as well. I'd prioritize them below the Elsecaller and Windrunners, but I'm not sure where I'd place them among the rest. It might be hard to bait them into a position where they could be realistically targeted.

It would be difficult for certain, and I don't think that Odium's forces would pursue a strategy based on winning any one Desolation in the manner you describe. Their major advantages involve degrading the opposing populations so that, in future Desolations, there are fewer people who might become Radiants and mundane soldiers are less capable and more poorly equipped. Attrition is the Fused's greatest weapon. It's hard to make really specific plans without knowing the reason that Feverstone Keep might be so important to hold, as pointed out by @ParaTulip. There are also a lot of questions about the Purelake, which has some decidedly unnatural features, which might change things if we knew the answers. But if we accept that it must be taken my top priorities, roughly in order of desirability, would be: Kill, negate, or otherwise subvert the Elsecaller and Lightweavers. Their presence in the keep makes a siege pointless. Kill the Windrunners. They are versatile, but taking out a Radiant Windrunner also takes out their squires for free. This would seriously impact the Radiants' ability to maneuver and harry the Fused. Steal, destroy, or damage the gemstones at the keep. Ability to preserve Stormlight for use between Highstorms is absolutely necessary for the Radiants to be as valuable as they are. Degrade the keep itself, especially but not only the aluminum. It's a valuable and versatile resource that they won't be able to replace and adds meaningfully to the keep's defense. Kill high-Oath Radiants as opportunity allows, but other than the three Orders listed above the rest seem less important. Dangerous for sure, especially since we don't know what certain Orders can do at those levels. But overall the other orders seem less able to dictate where and how engagements take place than an ample squad of Windrunners. The Fused will want the Radiants to be stuck in the Keep and always responding, not choosing. Obviously these are all easier said than done. In particular, (1) seems like it would be very difficult. Maybe an assassination attempt by a Masked One would work but that seems like a tall order. (2) seems important operationally, and achievable, because the Windrunners need to actually sortie to be useful and this makes it possible to draw them out into situations where the highest-value targets might be vulnerable. (3) is very important but might be nearly as difficult as (1): the Radiants will be aware of their reliance on the gems, and the time when they're most collectively vulnerable is probably during Highstorms, a situation which inherently favors the Radiants. (4) is easiest to achieve and important but response is also entirely up to the Radiants, so it seems hard to use for acute leverage. My general approach would be like a game of Connect 4: do as many things as possible at once which might each provide some incremental advantage, not because they will be decisive or undetected but because forcing the Radiants to respond to all of them will eventually provide an opportunity to impose one of these meaningful losses and/or provide additional opportunity to do so later. Attrition. Realistically we'd have to worry about reinforcements and opportunity costs of focusing on the keep, but those were not in the scenario. Focused Ones bombard the keep, pursuing (4), and trying to stop them will involve drawing Radiants out where they might be struck down, working towards (2). Bonus points for interfering with gemstone recharging, though bombardment that precise during a Highstorm seems unrealistic. Altered Ones manipulate the landscape in ways that make it harder for the mundane soldiers to maneuver, increasing the need to deploy Radiants (especially the Windrunners), again working towards (2). Using the chaos of battle to insert Masked Ones into the keep as saboteurs seems valuable, as they could subtly do a lot to work towards (3) like cracking gemstones or degrading their cut. Setting up fake staging areas as Potemkin installations would be useful to confuse the Radiants and prod them to investigate. If they do investigate there is a chance to take down a Radiant, and if they don't then the Fused can actually use them. Deploy any Unmade in ways that require the Radiants to split their attention. Even if Yelig-Nar is off to the side not doing anything, the Radiants will still have to keep attention and resources ready in case he does do something; he cannot simply be ignored. Since the Radiants are fixated on holding the keep, no matter the reason, they can't leave. Losses for Odium's forces aren't very important while every loss for the Radiants is all but irreplaceable. The Fused haven't got much to defend and so no engagement puts much at risk for them. Time favors the Fused and eventually they can strip the Radiant forces of their magical and mundane capabilities. Eventually the Radiants will starve, be diminished to the point they are unable to resist invasion, or leave, at which point the Fused have claimed the keep and won the scenario. But, as above, I don't think that the Fused strategy would depend on something like taking the keep. The cycle of Desolations was working for them.

I think that Vasher is a good candidate for a major or ultimate antagonist, but that's mostly a product of his being extremely knowledgeable and passively immortal: he can be on the scene long enough to take the role, and knowledge lets him be more aware of what's going on than most (especially more than we readers will know) while also making him extremely versatile in influencing events. It's a short list of characters who are similarly capable and so Vasher being on that list cannot be ignored. The biggest thing that makes me doubt him in this role is his apathy, and that apathy seems based (at least in part) on concern about unintended or uncontrollable consequences of his actions. Vasher sure seems deeply upset about things he's done, even though it's not clear which specific things trouble him the most. I feel confident that we'll get a lot more character development for Vasher, so maybe this will change. I read his distaste for gods as being more about generalized hierarchies, dominance, and disdain more than "I oppose anyone who holds a Shard, and the Shards themselves". I could be way off on that. Since Shards can't really be destroyed, it's an interesting idea that he might favor an approach like Rayse's to shatter them into pieces too small to sustain Vessels as god-like. I'm less on board with future developments continuing with the musical-Shards rotation that is so often discussed here. That could still be what happens, and obviously it matters who holds the Shards, but the pattern of "mortal defeats a Shard, takes the Shard, only to fall to another mortal in turn" is kind of clunky as the driving force of the plot. I hope that the Cosmere story turns on things other than that pattern, even if the Shards change hands along the way. I'm less and less inclined to buy "aligned with Autonomy" as solid evidence of anything, unless we elevate Autonomy to prime-antagonist status as well (and even then I'm not as animated about the idea as I used to be).