TheoreticalMagic

Tbh I don't think we know enough about Splintering a Shard (with the intent of killing them) to know yet what happened with Ambition. We know that Odium had MORE of an idea what he was doing when he caught up with her again and killed her after killing Aona and Skai....but we also know that when he killed those two on Sel, he stuffed them in the Cognitive Realm specifically to STOP what ended up happening BECAUSE he stuffed them in the Cognitive Realm. Aka the Dor over time becoming self-aware, its own power not in need of a host. So we do know that Odium had more of an idea how to go about his end goal of permanently ridding himself of a rival Shard when he killed Ambition. But we have no idea if that actually means it did the trick. For all we know at this point, although Ambition is Splintered, its Vessel dead and gone....there could over time in the Threnodite system be large enough pieces of Ambition's power to grow their own Intents. So Ambition might not be possible to reform, its conclusively finished.....but there could be Splinters that almost act as smaller Shards OF Ambition now....things like Conquest and Acquisition and other aspects of Ambition. And even if you could combine all of them back into a single Shard again, what you end up with might not be the equivalent of the Shard that was originally Splintered, because we know the Shards CAN change and grow in various ways - that's the whole point of Honor merging with Odium as part of Dalinar's gambit. To see if the power of Honor can learn something as part of Retribution. So if the pieces of Ambition - separate from each other - change in ways that mean by the time anyone COULD try and put them back together, you'd never get the original Shard back again because now the ingredients comprising it would be slightly different.....then that could still satisfy the various claims Brandon's made about Ambition definitely being dead.

Tbh I'm expecting him to not get it back, hence the focus on giving him a Shardplate prosthetic instead of him managing to make do with the peg in the meanwhile. With how long it'll likely be before they have access to Lift or access to Regrowth, Adolin's pragmatism and willingness to change his sense of self over the course of the books, his adaptability, etc....might result in him internalizing an acceptance of himself as missing that foot by the time actually healing it becomes an option. His coming to terms with his disability in order to speedrun his return to being the best swordsman he can possibly be, especially with how much the Unoathed are needed, plausibly suggests that Regrowth in the future won't be an option for him because he'll already have adapted his Identity/self-image to view himself as not needing his foot back in order to feel whole and competent. As long as the Shardplate prosthetic lets him do what is most important to him and his sense of self, fulfills the necessary functions - even accounting for the likelihood that he'll have to take it off at times, magic or not, same as any prosthetic - cosmere healing probably just won't see it as something that needs changing, ultimately. But only because Adolin himself sees it that way. Unlike Lopen who always emphasized himself as missing his arm....not necessarily in a self-deprecating way, he had a sense of humor about it of course, but the way he talked about his arm kept his awareness focused on that limb as something he actually felt was MISSING, hence why it did regrow.

Now that I think about it, with five being Endowment's number it makes a lot of sense why Honor would be so intent on specifying five wouldn't work for his purposes. Endowment is about giving a gift with no expectations or needed reciprocation....whereas Honor demands that for something given/received something must be offered/upheld in return. Endowment offers boons freely....Honor demands his power must be earned. And especially since the entire nature of his concern around the time of the abandoning of the Oathpact was that Surgebinders using their powers unchecked, without the strict bonds and oaths he'd structured originally, would lead to the destruction of Roshar....it makes a lot of sense that he'd view five as being the exact opposite of what he needed there. The power sought to seal Odium had to be met by an equivalently weighted offer from those seeking to use it to seal him, in terms of what they were willing to do in exchange for it....5 + 5. Five Heralds maintaining the Oathpact would have just reflected Endowment, a gift given without terms. Entirely counterproductive for his needs.

If the Iriali aren't of Adonalsium directly, I'd definitely agree with them being of Virtuosity. With her as thoroughly as Splintered as she seems to be, and given that the Returned are tiny Splinters of Endowment, it makes sense that a Shard who willingly Splintered herself past the point of having a core remaining centerpoint to her power/Intent could be the basis of an entire people. I do think the Iriali (and the Sleepless, who I believe only came to Roshar BECAUSE of the Iriali, perhaps the original Sleepless were following the Iriali Long Trail or watching them throughout their journey from world to world for whatever reason, hence both ending up in what became the Silver Kingdoms and having shared history) - anyway, I do think they've been on Roshar for a long time, thousands of years at least, but I do agree that there's a strong basis for the Iriali Long Trail not stretching back as far as the Shattering. (Though....that doesn't necessarily mean that the Iriali and their original world couldn't have existed pre-Shattering. They could have been experiencing life as individuals on their homeworld for millennia before something forced an exodus from their original planet....such as one of the Shards taking an interest in them because of a suspected connection to Adonalsium. I think we're so used to associating the Iriali and worldhopping, its easy to conflate them as having ALWAYS existed as worldhoppers. Even the idea of them as Splinters or pieces of a Shard or Adonalsium himself doesn't inherently mean the Long Trail itself stretches back to their origins as a people. Something set the Long Trail in motion, and we have no idea what or when that was....it could just as easily have been five thousand years after the Shattering, with them having existed all that time on their original planet....or in Virtuosity's star system a thousand years before they came to Roshar, and mere centuries after Virtuosity Splintered). All that said, I think a strong case could be made for matching the Iriali to Virtuosity and still being one of the more ancient cosmere cultures, albeit not as ancient as the Shattering itself. And Virtuosity - the Intent of artistry, which is born of and relates heavily to experience, identity and perspective - makes a lot of sense as the source of a nomadic people intent on experiencing life across the cosmere in whatever form. I believe there was even a WoB that talked about how before she Splintered herself, Virtuosity was known to travel throughout the cosmere observing and inspiring artistic expression across multiple worlds. The Iriali, then, would definitely be following in her footsteps in a lot of respects. (My original theory about the Iriali way back when was that they started out as golden counterparts to the Elantrians, Skai's Dominion based version of Aona's chosen devotees of scholarship, arts and culture, and intent on consolidating all peoples' of the cosmere as part of the One....their god, who they saw as having Dominion over all. Thus still making them one of the oldest cultures in the cosmere, and their Long Trail having begun when Odium killed Aona and Skai and shoved the remnants of Devotion and Dominion into the Cognitive Realm. My initial suspicion was that they were originally on the level of Elantrian power, just geared towards Dominion pursuits, and so Autonomy swooped in trying to hijack the potentially deadliest army in the cosmere for herself, sparking the Iriali to set out on the Long Trail to stay out of her reach - and forgetting/disconnecting from their original region-based magics in the process, at the same time as their passed down religion moved away from Skai's original philosophy of conquest and forced consolidation under one rule and became what we know as the Iriali view of the One and the nature of life in the cosmere - as those who did fall into Autonomy's grasp became corrupted by her Investiture and turned into the much-feared men of red and gold, powered by magic similar in type and potency to Elantrian magics and that Autonomy hacked to be less region-dependent. I've since moved away from this one as there's too much we still don't know about the timeline of Sel but the Elantris sequels might end up shifting me back in this direction, depending on what history we get about Elantris and if there are any hints of a pre-Fjordell society that potentially matched their power level as well).

I'm working on a theory that Autonomy created the Sleepless on whatever world they originated, and am trying to link up certain things we know about Autonomy's Investiture on Taldain. The nature of the Sleepless has always seemed to me to be an inverse of the Iriali, who seem to have some history with them....whereas the Iriali talk about people all being pieces of the One experiencing different things and bringing those different experiences back into the One, the Sleepless through their hive mind experience things as a singular entity even through their separate parts. So like, the parallels/overlaps are there, but they approach the concept of the-one-as-many in completely different ways. I'm of the opinion that Adonalsium created the Iriali directly, or they're in some way tiny Splinters of him, and I think Autonomy....who likes to experience things and present herself in very different ways but without ever truly sacrificing her own autonomy or oversight of the self....I think she was intrigued by the concept of the Iriali and tried to create her own version of them. BUT because her mindset genuinely can't reconcile the idea of the One Prime Being of a collective giving up total control and agency and just....waiting on its various pieces to come back together....her version of this concept resulted in the Sleepless. Beings who experience life in a thousand different ways as part of a greater whole, without ever being truly separate from each other or at any point NOT still connected to the greater whole. Anyway, the Sleepless also made me think of sand mastery, and the way its all about connecting millions of singular grains of sand into a collective unit directed by the will of the sand master, and I think similar principles are at work with the Sleepless and the way hordelings integrate and connect as part of their collective. Not to mention how Investiture is distributed on Dayside by a micro-organism in the lichen....aka a tiny organism integrating into a larger whole and spreading an ability to Connect small things into Larger Wholes in the process. I'm just trying to connect dots from how the lichen/micro-organisms conduct Investiture to link up individual sand particles to how individual hordelings might be similarly Connected through Investiture and I feel like there's a piece I'm still missing, but that's where my thoughts are at currently. So yeah, my answer is its not just to do with the Dawnshards specifically and more to do with the nature of the Sleepless' innate Investiture. Based on cosmere timelines, I'd guess if Autonomy DID create the Sleepless, they would have to be among her first creations (or among the first creations of any Shards, likely), which would account for their greater knowledge of ancient matters like the use of the Dawnshards, back when those things were still relatively well known by the already cosmere-aware players. I suspect if she sent some Sleepless to Roshar way back in the early days, given that she and Tanavast seem unlikely to be friends or like-minded, she might have made a point to Invest her creations in some way that's deliberately resistant to Honor's power over bonds, because she didn't want his innate Connection to...well....Connection, to override the way SHE used Connection in the creation of her The-One-As-Many entities to keep each Sleepless as a singular collective, and so that would account for the way Surgebinders and even Heralds seem less than effective against them. Even Skybreakers using the Surge of Division. They were designed to be resistant to such forces in specific. (Note: this doesn't mean I think the Sleepless we've met are actively agents of Autonomy...they wouldn't be the first to disagree with the designs or agendas of the Shard who first created them. And due to the nature of the Rosharan system and how the Shards within it are bound to it, it seems likely that Autonomy can't actively reach any Sleepless on Roshar and was reliant on them worldhopping off Roshar to have any influence over them again - at least, if she didn't want to alert Odium to their presence or her potential meddling. Which would mean the Sleepless on Roshar could have had a lot of time away from their creator's active influence to go rogue or develop their own agendas contrary to hers). Anyway, so yeah, I think the answer to OP's question is it was a combination of factors: the nature of the Sleepless and their own innate Investiture and not just the sheer overwhelming deluge of two Dawnshards coming together in the same place, but the fact that the two Dawnshards were Change and Exist specifically. Essentially, the Primal Commands best suited to turning something from what it is into something different, without negating what it is. So the Sleepless collapsed because the nature of the Dawnshards, plus their sheer power, combined to unintentionally effect change upon - or disrupt - the way the hordelings that comprise a Sleepless are Connected.

Yeah, in my head I kinda liken Dai-Gonarthis to being Annihilation, if we were to imagine the Unmade as Splinters of Odium big enough to have their own intent. That's not quite what they are, of course, but thematically I think it makes a lot of sense to picture Dai-Gonarthis as being born of the part of Odium that's just pure, destructive, all-encompassing hatred for everything....nihilism for the sake of nihilism. I think existentially she's something that even Odium/Retribution might realize they can't really control, because again from a thematic angle, the self-destructive nature of total annihilation is at best you get a Pyrrhic victory when you unleash something like that. So what I'm wondering is if maybe someone at some point might be able to "defeat" Dai-Gonarthis by getting Retribution to absorb her back into himself, Unmake her again, by setting things up to make him realize that keeping her on the board is ultimately going to cost him more than it would gain him? But basically I just mean it might be that only Retribution can actually deal with her without escalating a conflict to world-destroying proportions.

This is one of the plot points I'm most curious to see followed up on....the price demanded for unleashing her. Which Taravangian was said to be "putting off for now" but also seemed to see as a necessary quid pro quo that even he wasn't exempt from. From what I recall, she wants to break and destroy worlds....and if she, like other spren, is no longer bound to Roshar....she might end up being Taravangian's most terrifying weapon. Even the Fused were afraid of what it meant to unleash her and thought Odium would never do so because the cost would be too high - after all, people fighting over a world generally don't want that world completely destroyed and no longer worth fighting for. But if her "price" can be met by letting her destroy OTHER worlds as Taravangian unleashes her throughout the cosmere....suddenly she goes from being a potential mutually assured destruction option to a world-breaker who could viably see a lot of action. I think dealing with her before she can be unleashed on the rest of the cosmere might be a major plot point for the second half of the series. Thoughts?

Just want to say it was "and the unhealthy doses of Adderall" bit that made me go yikes and soured me personally, because as someone who's neurodivergent as hell in ways that present as alternatingly pedantic and over-excited essays when theorizing about a hyper-fixation, like....I know I'm not super keen about someone making assumptions about my self-medication habits based on me just being me and having harmless fun that's very easy to opt-out of if you don't want to participate in a conversation in the spirit in which it was raised. Not that I'm assuming that was about me or any of my posts, I'm just saying in general, that felt extremely unnecessary when it costs zero cents to just be like "tbh I just think Cultivation sucks at chess, probably."

Slight tangent, but this book ruined my theory that five is Cultivation's number. A lot of stuff in the cosmere is about things working their way up to the number five, growing and evolving over time....its important to a lot of magic systems like the Fifth Heightening in Awakening, the Fifth Ideal in Surgebinding, etc....it just made sense to me that it was like....the cultivation of Investiture. But Honor seems to dislike the number five, not just dismissing it as an option for the Oathpact but calling it weak, etc. Just doesn't feel like something he'd associate with Cultivation....hmm, UNLESS that was more the power's influence talking, and the power has a grudge against Cultivation because it blames her for being a bad influence on its Vessel, such as their initial agreement to settle a world together, which made the Shards' initial isolation policy the first vow Tanavast broke? Hmm, maybe I just changed my mind. Alternatively, I could see Ambition applying to working your way up the Investiture ladder, and being someone both Tanavast and Honor wasn't so keen on, so maybe five was Ambition's number.

Adolin definitely comes across Ash and Taln's dead bodies after they die taking out all the Fused in the battle of Azimir. He thinks about how Taln's corpse looks like it took a dozen lances stuck in him and he's holding the crushed skull of a Fused in his hand. So he for sure knows that Heralds leave bodies behind when they die. And given its Adolin "I knew there was something weird about that man" Kholin, I would actually love it if tons of more knowledgeable cosmere scholars are sure Kaladin's dead but he's convinced Kal's a Herald now and coming back, and is going to have another "THIS IS WHY PEOPLE SHOULD ALWAYS LISTEN TO ME AND MY RIGHTNESS FOREVER" moment, as one of the only people who manages to not appear at all surprised, just triumphant, when he sees Kaladin speeding into a battle. Few characters pull off the simple faith in 'good things can still happen, even in Damnation' characterization as well as him, so if I had to PICK just one character to be waiting on Kal's Return, it'd probably be him for that very reason. Plenty of people have theories, but he's convinced its what will happen because the second it occurred to him as a possibility, he decided to just have faith in it until it was definitively proven otherwise. He believed Maya wasn't dead and could still become more than the dead-eye that people and spren "far more knowledgeable than him" kept insisting was all she'd ever be, so it makes sense for him to be like hey, my track record with believing people everyone says are dead aren't actually dead, so I'm gonna keep doing it. Alternatively, Renarin would be a likely person to catch a glimpse of a possible future showing Kaladin's Return, which could plausibly lead to a small circle of people waiting and hoping for it based on that.

I think a few people are probably going to suspect, but their personal question will be if they're actually sure or just trying to convince themselves of something they want to be true. But once the major players find out about Kaladin's body being discovered near where Szeth - before losing consciousness - had just been talking to a couple of Heralds who wanted to make him a new tenth Herald to replace Jezrien....Jasnah, Shallan, etc should all have a pretty good guess about what happened. They understand enough about the mechanics of stuff by now that combined with Szeth's information, they can be confident a tenth Herald had to have been chosen if something - most likely the Oathpact - is still limiting Retribution in some fashion. And really, there's not many options for whom that replacement Herald could be. Kaladin being Kaladin, a Windrunner, bonded to the Ancient Daughter.....he's a pretty obvious choice. I think the fact that his body was left behind might give some of them SOME pause, but only in the sense that it makes them question whether the Oathpact is broken beyond repair. Once they realize that something's protecting the spren, as the Knights of Wind and Truth book implies, it makes more sense that becoming a Herald transcends physicality. After all, they also found Taln and Ash's bodies when they died. They know that the Heralds' unique nature doesn't preclude them leaving a corpse behind when they die. So yeah, I'd say most of the main cast have a pretty strong hunch about what happened to Kaladin and are expecting him to be among the Heralds if and when they Return. Its more just that a) they have no idea when that might be or if it'll happen at all, given that the entire original process/mechanism for Heralds' Returns and Desolations is irrelevant, and b) they know they really, really WANT it to be true that Kaladin's dead but not REALLY dead, so they're likely stuck in a state of holding their breath hoping for something they believe to be true to actually be proven true....and while they're still alive to see it.

Honestly, I mostly just ascribe to the Reason is hidden on Roshar theory because I WANT it to be true as I hope all the remaining Shards are still in play. I'm always bummed when we find out that one of the Shards (or even just Vessels) has been relegated a non-player offscreen way back in the days of cosmere backstory. I understand WHY it happens that way, a certain degree of mythic events that happened in the mists of pre-history helps build the epic scope of the cosmere, but finding out after the fact that Ambition, Devotion and Dominion were all dead and Shattered, and that Virtuosity Splintered itself before we ever got to "meet" them.....it always gets an "aww, man" moment from me. And with Ruin and Preservation "dead" - or at least their Vessels, even if the power lives on as Harmony, and same with Tanavast and Rayse.....of the active Shard players that have been around the whole time, we really only have Endowment, Autonomy and Cultivation at this point. So with no real idea yet of Valor, Invention, Mercy, Whimsy and Reason's statuses, I would rather they were all still Unshattered and at least a few of them with their original Vessels, because I'm far more interested in the clash of personalities between the beings that we KNOW have history than meeting the remaining five Shards and finding out they're all effectively new players with none of that epic history. I do expect that probably one or two have changed hands or had something significant happen, and this is definitely an interesting idea. Of all the remaining Shards, I feel like Reason is the biggest wildcard, because the mere fact that nobody has seemed to have any contact with them or sense of their doings in ten thousand years means pretty much anything could be going on with them.

Just spoiler tagging the whole thing because it hinges around the end of the book in general:

Instead of the presence of red implying active corruption, maybe it could've been orange-red because what Adolin and the dead-eyes did started burning out the corruption of Honor's Investiture that happened when the Knights all broke their oaths at the Recreance in ADDITION to Bo-Ado-Mishram....who had just seized some of Odium's power from his Shardpool...being imprisoned and that having major ripple effects throughout Roshar, due to how Invested in it both Honor and Odium were. By reclaiming - or making anew - Honor based bonds via a wholly new kind of pact that didn't require spoken oaths but rather just an unspoken understanding between Adolin and the dead-eyes, a mutual promise to always together try and do what they believed was in the SPIRIT of Honor....maybe that sort of reignited what was left of the old broken bonds the dead-eyes had, that were holding them back. And the red signified the corruption and rot of what all those broken oaths had become over the millennia, perverting the original spirit of the bonds when spren first began pairing with Surgebinders.....and this new approach to working together that was based in common goals and mutual trust rather than adherence to strict and all too easily broken rules basically turned whatever was left and usable from the original bonds into kindling that fueled the forging of these newer, stronger bonds? I'm not sure of the mechanics exactly, but I don't think there's anything insidious about the presence of red when the Unoathed first appeared.....that narrative did a lot of build-up to earn a sense of triumph from that moment. Too much so for me to believe it was a red herring and there's some secret trap yet to come, with the red being a warning of some kind. As of now, I'm viewing it as a cleansing of what didn't work and replacing it with something new and sturdier. Plus, I just don't think it had anything to do with the Investiture of an as yet unrevealed Shard (and I say this as someone who does believe that Reason might be hiding on Roshar). This was a huge climactic moment that built off of several books' storylines. It just doesn't work in my mind for it to turn out after the fact that surprise, it was another Shard's Investiture all along, someone that there was genuinely no real possibility of suspecting had a hand in that, without the requisite buildup. This however, even if I have the mechanics/logistics of it wrong, could build nicely off of what was already laid in place and as of now I'm looking it as kinda thematically saying even as Dalinar was reflecting on the negative side of Honor and all that the harm that can come from it, his son was leading the charge in proving that there is still value in Honor, with the strongest expressions of it coming from simple acts and values rather than anything performative. Especially since all of that came about directly from Adolin reflecting on his and his father's conflicting views on vows vs promises, perceived Honor versus Honorable behavior, etc.

Here's an actual theory about why Honor and Odium combining to form Retribution could plausibly have been Cultivation's plan: Nobody has done more evil in the cosmere than Odium. Nobody has personally harmed more people on Roshar than Odium, and now Taravangian. Cultivation herself demonstrates just how many people there are that want Retribution AGAINST Taravangian/Odium: a huge portion of the power that comprises Retribution is directly responsible for the death of the man/god/being she once loved. Why does this matter? Because if ANYONE from Roshar now at any point winds up in a position to be a rival for Retribution's power....to make the power itself CHOOSE between a choice of Vessels, if Taravangian's hold slips for even a second and someone else is present to be a viable successor.... The Shard of Retribution - by its very Intent - is predisposed to side with literally ANYONE over Taravangian at this point. Because no matter how well he wields the power of Retribution....it will never come close to matching how viable a target he is FOR Retribution...in literally anyone else's hands. All that's required is a half second of getting the power to go "hey wait a second" and take a closer look at its Vessel and the things he's done, and it could be up for grabs faster than you can say "remember how hard Honor dumped Tanavast when he wasn't being Honorable?" The Vessel is not the Shard. The Shard is not nearly as invested in being held by a particular Vessel as the Vessel is in holding on to that Shard. I fully believe Cultivation had HOPES that Taravangian would be a better Odium than Rayse and take things in a better direction. But in case things DID go this way - and I don't think she's naive enough not to realize there was a good chance Taravangian would disappoint her, like, everything we know about Cultivation strongly paints her as a cynic - well. There's a fatal flaw baked into Retribution's Ascension: everything Taravangian did to Ascend as Retribution makes him the biggest potential target FOR Retribution, the second any other potential Vessel can get the power to let them make a case for that. AND the fact that Retribution is arguably more of Odium than of Honor, rather than perfectly a mix of both, given that portions of Honor split off before forming.....and considering that Odium - both when held by Rayse and by Taravangian - has more than a few moments of self-hatred.....and that before being Retribution, most of that Shard's power was doing terrible, retribution deserving things as Odium.... I think that's also a very strong recipe for Retribution not being nearly as stable as Taravangian (and others) believe it to be. I think once the power of Honor has learned various lessons as part of Retribution, such as learning the importance of personal accountability and acknowledging when you've done harm, if one truly wants to be Honorable.... Its possible, even likely, that it might not actually be that hard to separate Honor back out from Retribution, Splinter the Retribution Shard back into its component parts. Because the power of Honor, not wanting to be party to Taravangian's perpetuation of harm and recognizing its own complicity while also now having learned that sometimes Honor requires breaking bad oaths or vows or unions that no longer help but only compound harm.....would be required to act against ITSELF as part of Retribution AND the parts of Retribution that are Odium's original power. Helped along by the fact that being part of Retribution could very realistically enhance the self-hatred parts of the Odium power, due to an awareness (via Honor's proximity) that it DESERVES to be hated - and taken revenge upon - by the people its harmed. Meaning the Odium power CAN'T muster a defense against the Honor power when they're both bound up as part of Retribution. That's a very unstable precipice to balance upon, and Honor yanking its power back out of Retribution could leave Odium far weaker or more off balance than it was when Taravangian seized Honor's power....while Honor, at the moment of taking its power back from Retribution....would be more clear in Intent than its been in a LONG time.

Chiming in to say I DID really like the gravity of the moment Retribution feels all the other Shards turn their attention to him. There was a very eldritch/cosmic horror vibe to it. Taravangian, chuckling nervously as he realizes wanting him destroyed is literally the first and only thing these entities have agreed on in ten thousand years: Oh no, I'm in danger. Two seconds later, figuring that Reason and Valor are likely just as aware of him and intent on his destruction as the others, and realizing the fact that they're somehow still shielding themselves from his sight means as far as he knows, they could show up on his front door and he still might not be able to tell: Oh no, the danger is real. (I personally don't ascribe to the theory that Valor is on Roshar, but I DO firmly believe that the newly minted god of Retribution is doing the divine equivalent of not sleeping well, knowing that of all the Shards, VALOR has somehow made themselves invisible to him and could be anywhere. He's like mmmm, don't love that. This is not ideal for me.)

I could see this going a number of ways. I'm of the opinion that with the original bindings null and void enough that the Shards are no longer bound within the Rosharan system, we don't have enough info yet to know whether the new Oathpact maintains and perpetuates the limits Honor placed on the Surges in the same way.....and the magic system already evolved in ways he didn't expect, given that he never planned for the Knight Radiants when he created the Heralds. The spren forming bonds with humans - within the structure of the framework he'd created - and thus granting use of Surges to people beyond the original Heralds....that wasn't of his design, that was human and spren impulses, instincts and innovations that led to that. So without Honor as any kind of limiting factor at this point, unless Ishar was deliberate about maintaining the original restrictions (and I don't think he was, he was adapting on the fly to figure out something that could work to protect spren instead of contain Fused, some significant changes are inevitable)....I think we could be look at a whole new field of play by the time the series returns. Meaning we could see spren being able to grant more or different Surges than in the past, or being able to bond multiple spren and have access to multiple Orders.... Especially because thematically, I could see the Heralds coming to the conclusion that trying so hard to focus individually on one singular aspect of Honor....like Justice, Truth, Loyalty.....was unintentionally or not leading to the exact same issues as arise from Odium being disConnected from any kind of tempering Love or Mercy or Compassion, shading Intents that provide a framing and context for divine Wrath and focus it productively rather than just destructively. Nale's entire storyline is his realization that Justice devoid of compassion, adhering to the letter of the law rather than looking to the spirit of WHY that law is needed or helpful....it just flat out doesn't work. It creates more harm than help. So combined with the way this book made a point to remind/clarify that originally the Heralds had access to different or more Surges, that Ishar was an Elsecaller or used those Surges long before he was ever a Bondsmith....I could easily see the Orders - and the Heralds - becoming more of a guideline than a strict framework in the second half of the series. With more blurring of the lines between Orders or people belonging to multiple Orders or changing (evolving) from belonging to one Order at one time to a different Order at a later time, as they and their priorities and sense of Identity changes due to things that happen to them or shifts in who they want to be and what they want to focus on. All of this is to say that yes, I do think that Kaladin is - or could be - a Bondsmith now, but I don't think that means that he isn't a Windrunner anymore or that he can't be both, just as I believe it doesn't mean that Ishar is no longer a Bondsmith or has to become a different Order or lead a different Order instead. With spren (and Knights Radiant) no longer confined to the Rosharan system, the whole cosmere has opened up to them in a lot of ways.....which means that Ishar could have a very different role to play in guiding people during the next Return. His history and expertise with Elsecalling and his history and expertise with Connections as a Bondsmith could be crucial in getting people who have Retribution gunning for them beyond his reach, finding allies on other worlds, transporting Knight Radiants to other worlds that need help or adapting Surgebinding to different Investiture sources, stuff like that. Meanwhile, Kaladin could step up to take on more of the traditionally spiritual/guiding/advising aspects of being a Bondsmith, befitting his role as Therapist to the Demigods.

I too would not be shocked to see Bavadin slip an avatar onto Roshar ASAP.....and given her trend of impersonating (or inspiring) figures from other religions, imagine if she tried to take advantage of the nature of the Oathpact and have an avatar impersonate a Herald while they're stuck on Braize. And

For what its worth, the state of things at the end really works for me, because its the kind of thing I've been wanting to see ever since Mistborn. The Final Empire ended with a lot of big dramatic changes to the world as things were set right or at least made better for Scadrial's development.....but given that I remember that Brandon once described the premise of the first trilogy as "what if the Chosen One FAILED to save the world"....I was always fascinated by the idea of a story set right after Rashek did what he did to the ashmounts and everything. And since Brandon loves exploring similar ideas/themes/startpoints taken in completely opposite directions, I was kind of always EXPECTING to at some point get a series that uses that point of 'the entire world/way of life being altered dramatically and not in a good way' as a major focus or setting. (Additionally, even if you set a story right at the crux of a massive global/societal shift, you need SOME midpoint or timeskip so the new status quo has at least a little time to set in and send out ripple effects the characters have to adjust to, otherwise you're not ever going to be able to make the most of such a huge, dramatic shift to a status quo). So I both got what I wanted and was hoping to see, as well as always kind of expecting something like this from the series he cites as his magnum opus. I think that mindset probably has a lot to do with why it worked for me, but at the same time, it IS a very big swing to take, so I can understand it not landing well for others.

I think a lot of Cultivation's actions look different if we imagine that given the fact she is much better at future sight than a lot of Shards....and her very Intent is about change over time....she viewed Odium's eventual release in SOME fashion as an inevitability. Nothing lasts forever - at least not with Preservation actively in the mix - and at some point after she and Tanavast stopped communicating, she could have very plausibly come to the belief that given how much Odium had already managed to weasel around Tanavast's initial ideas/intentions when binding him and find ways to erode his will and the weaken his bonds.....it was naive to imagine there wasn't a strong chance he'd somehow manage to get free despite their best efforts to contain him. Tanavast's best shot still ultimately just led to a war of attrition that yielded increasingly diminishing returns. With him/Honor no longer ACTIVELY in play, there was always only going to be so much Cultivation could do to counter Odium and keep him in check on her own. So from that lens, I look at a lot of what Cultivation did as possibly being more about her just trying to do damage control. She was like okay here's the situation at this point, let me see what I can salvage from it while trying to sneak a Hail Mary or two in there.

I do think that while significantly younger than him at this point, Oroden might be a major factor in what happens with Gavinor going forward. I have a hunch that Oroden might occupy a narrative niche similar to Lift's presence in the first five books....ten years from Stormfall, he'll be a young teenager. Still too young to be a major driving narrative force, I imagine, but old enough by then to be a sort of interlude or support character that's well connected enough to the major players to drive some character beats forward in significant subplots. And he and Gavinor might have an interesting if weird dynamic, because they SHOULD be around the same age, only a year or two apart, but they're obviously not. Might he be a reminder to Gavinor of what he would have been if not for Taravangian's plot, or a glimpse of the kind of life, kind of person he could have become if the supernatural shenanigans hadn't happened to him? And thus, perhaps serve as a kind of guidepost or lodestone to a potential path forward that veers away from where Taravangian attempted to direct him and tries to course correct down a path of more natural development? I think it potentially makes for a very interesting dynamic, having the little brother of the Herald of Second Chances, the former Champion of Odium and Lift, the biggest remaining connection to a non-Retribution related divinity, being a kind of next generation of major characters. (And while Oroden at age fourteen or whatever probably can't drive too much of the plot, we only know the INITIAL intended time skip, the ten year gap before Roshar catches up to the rest of the cosmere by the time of Book Six. There could easily be a year or two time skip somewhere in the mix after that point to get Oroden in his later teens and more "protagonist-aged.")

Not really relevant, but since reading the book I've been laughing my ass off at Tanavast's description of Edgli as one of the most compassionate people he'd ever met. It really speaks to Hoid's ability to annoy people that one of the most compassionate people the Vessel of Honor had ever known in his millennia of existence just flat out can't stand Hoid to such a degree that it practically oozes off of her letters to him. That's just so funny to me and I had to comment on it somewhere.

Don't forget that as Shards, the Vessels perceive time VERY differently. Centuries can pass for them while feeling as if barely any time has passed at all. Tanavast made that clear. So IMO its actually MORE likely that Edgli would regard however long she lived as a mortal as though it encompassed a long duration than talking about a length of time she spent as a Shard as though it included an intolerable waiting period. Also too, Endowment insists she's one of the only Shards to abide by the non-interaction policy the original Vessels agreed to. I find it hard to imagine how any power could have imposed limitations on her AS a Shard without at least some kind of proximity to her, based on the conflicts between other Shards requiring some form of contact or closeness between them. All told, even if her lifespan as a mortal, pre-Shard, only comprised a fraction of the time she's spent as a Shard, I think as long as she looks back on that time THROUGH the lens of having experienced and perceived that passage of time in a normal mortal fashion, that's gonna fit the "long-denied" phrasing just as easily as if she were talking about some limitation that had been placed on her for centuries as a Shard.

I've been thinking about the fact that Braize is said to attract souls - seemingly having unique Spiritual Realm properties....in fact, while we know little of what happens on Braize, from the descriptions of the Heralds' torture there it almost seems like Braize has some kind of property that allows spiritual essences to manifest Physically on the planet. And while plenty of Shardworlds have active communities/presences in Shadesmar, Roshar has a unique connection to the Cognitive Realm due to it being the planet of spren, where cognitive entities can manifest Physically. And then there's Alaswha, which is where humans originated in the Rosharan system and whose magic - the original Surges as granted by Odium - seemed Physically rooted and needed no particular interaction with the Spiritual and Cognitive Realms to work (this is purely conjecture on my part, based on the fact that the limitations Honor and Cultivation imposed on Surgebinding are Cognitively and Spiritually derived and seemed entirely additive rather than replacing or modifying existing Cognitive/Spiritual mechanics for Surgebinding). What I'm getting at is Roshar's mathematical shape and the unique nature of a LOT about the Rosharan system....the implications that the Rosharan system was created with some purpose in mind....I'm wondering if the three primary planets of the system were deliberated created as part of some kind of experiment by Adonalsium? Like it doesn't seem to me to be a coincidence that Alaswha - the planet with the strongest Physical presence....is first from the sun. Roshar, with its unique Cognitive nature, is second. And Braize, with its unique Spiritual properties, is third. Add to that the fact that all three planets are intertwined in a cycle of resurrection and rebirth - the former inhabitants mourn the loss of Ashyn, the destroyed world - which is not actually as dead as they believe. Life, civilization, persists on Alaswha. The Heralds themselves could yet someday return to their original homeworld and reunite with the civilization of their former friends' and families' distant descendants. Roshar is a petri dish that acts as a microcosm exploring a nonstop cycle of birth, life, death and rebirth as both Fused and Heralds...Singers and humans...live and die and return over and over again....and now with this latest book, even deadeyed spren that were previously thought to be beyond help are now experiencing their own resurgences and type of rebirth, joining the cycle of resurrection. Roshar additionally is home to a god widely believed by major cosmere players/powers to be long dead and gone....only for it to be made clear in this book that in more ways than one, rumors of this god's demise have been greatly exaggerated. Tanavast IS present in a major way, living on as part of the Stormfather to a much greater degree than anyone suspected. And the power of Honor itself - also long believed to be Splintered, and that being the reason no successor Vessel had appeared in thousands of years - was discovered to actually be alive and well, in an almost literal sense, as it had grown its own sense of Identity and awareness in the complete opposite of the fractured power many expected it now was. And then Braize, the crucible that despite being called Damnation is also at the very heart of the cycle of resurrection and rebirth, with its unique nature being a fundamental part of the mechanism that makes this cycle possible....just as its talked about being a lifeless world, and yet....life very much does happen there, just in entirely unexpected and unorthodox ways. Tanavast reflected in one of the visions that when battling Rayse he realized why Adonalsium never fought back when he was Shattered. But was it just because he didn't want to destroy too much in the battle? Or could it be that just as many of the Shards have foresight....Adonalsium had a much more comprehensive awareness of possible futures than anyone realized, and was planning for its Shattering....and the Rosharan system is part of its contingency for its own rebirth? We theorize a lot about whether the 17th Shard or Hoid or various other cosmere players are scheming to reassemble Adonalsium, but we often leave out the biggest player of them all: what about Adonalsium's agency in all of this? The creator of the cosmere had no idea his Shattering was coming? If Cultivation and Dalinar and Sazed and Leras and multiple others can lay out gambits that they hope will someday yield the end results they're after.....why couldn't Adonalsium do the same thing....to a far more intricate degree, given that he had the benefit of a lot more time and resources to plan and prepare with, compared to the finite timeline and fractured shares of power his later successors make use of? I keep going back to how surprised Tanavast was about how effectively he/Honor was able to bind Odium. We also know that his number - ten - has special significance to the power of Honor, that there is some underlying mechanic at play when Ishar and the Wind talk about a CIRCLE of ten being most effective for binding Odium or Retribution? Tanavast didn't deliberately exploit the circle of ten gas giants surrounding the Rosharan system to bind Odium to the planets in the center of that circle of ten planets. But it seems WAY too coincidental to me that the shape of the Rosharan system just HAPPENS to be perfectly optimized for the power of Honor to bind Odium there of all places, whether Tanavast and Rayse - still relatively new to their powers - understood that at the time or not. Almost like SOMEBODY designed the system to be the perfect trap for three of the Shards best suited to starting and exploring a grand experimental cycle of life, death and rebirth in their attempts to contain, end or resolve their conflict. As well as creating the three planets at the center of all of that with unique properties not found elsewhere in the cosmere, that end up being crucial to that cycle. And then, for four books we've believed that between the ten gas giants, three habitable planets and three moons of Roshar, the total number of significant celestial bodies in the Rosharan system was sixteen....and we all know the significance of that number in the cosmere. But now we know that the Rosharan system was originally designed to have SEVENTEEN celestial bodies as part of its initial grand design. And one of them Shattered into pieces on the planet at the centerpoint of this whole system-wide design....leaving only sixteen. So what I want to know is WHEN did that seventeenth celestial body shatter specifically....and what does THAT signify? Did it truly shatter before the Shattering of Adonalsium? Did its Shattering perhaps coincide with the Shattering, and the myths of that are lost or still yet to be revealed in the depths of Singer or spren history? Could its Shattering have been the result of an activated failsafe that set the wheels of Rosharan system events in motion, like the Shattering of Adonalsium triggered some 'break glass in case of emergency' function....or could the grand design of the Rosharan system be part of some grand experiment to see if the power of sixteen could be used to reassemble the One in some way....and the shattered seventeenth celestial body is present because for such an experiment to work or be observable, there must be something FOR the power of sixteen to reassemble? Maybe the three moons of Roshar don't signify three Shards but rather represent the three Realms that Ashyn, Roshar and Braize all seem uniquely Connected to....plus a fourth shattered moon that could have been or could represent the three Realms combined into one, or as three different parts of a One? I have no idea, but I think there could be something here.... Edit: I also wonder if its not a coincidence that Roshar's rhythms, tones and Lights seem uniquely predisposed to experimenting with combinations of Shards or ways for their powers to combine or interact. Maybe that too is by design, and Adonalsium could've been laying the groundwork for later exploration/experimentation of possible Shard combinations in pursuit of the optimal outcomes....maybe like looking ahead to possible futures with Fortune and seeing if the fractured power of Adonalsium could be combined or gradually reassembled into something stronger than the original, or more tempered....a better alloy of the original Godmetal or a more illuminating Godlight? After all, the Singers seem to benefit from having more than a single Tone to make music with....and as a singular individual, Adonalsium only had one initial Tone to offer. Could better music, grander symphonies result from having more than just one Tone to use? The original Vessels (plus Hoid) seemed to be of the belief that the cosmere would be better off with multiple gods rather than just one. What if Adonalsium allowed himself to be Shattered, didn't fight back because he was curious to see if they were right? But put certain contingencies in place for in case they were wrong.... Course, that doesn't mean that everything that happens is according to his grand design, even if any of this is true. There's still plenty of room for someone to hijack his experiment...