The Stick

I have a few trepidations on this theory. Primarily, my point would be the question of why did Rayse not go after this Dawnshard. I sincerely doubt that Taravangian somehow knows about this, but Rayse did not. While you could argue that Rayse would not want the Dawnshard for this purpose, if that is indeed what it does, I think this argument doesn't really work. The main thing I consider is if Rayse knew there was a Dawnshard, a Cosmere Superweapon, he would not allow it to rot in the Shattered Plains for no good reason. Therefore, while this theory has a direction I like, I don't this that Todium sent the Shattered Plains force to claim a Dawnshards. Now, if they discover it while fighting, I think he will go after it, but I doubt it is the cause.

I really like this theory. To me, the entire Stormlight Archive is about broken people becoming better, and reaching towards higher ideals. I believe this is exemplified in Dalinar more than any other character. And it is obvious that The Way Of Kings was really what catalyzed Dalinar's growth into a better man. On the other hand, Taravangian had been precisely constructed to be a direct and polar opposite to Dalinar philosophically, with his brutal style of utilitarianism. I think that a final contest testing the man Dalinar had become would be very fitting. Thirdly, the Way of Kings had always been a central point throughout the storyline. After all, the entire series opened with the prologue with Gavilar telling Dalinar to find the most important words a man can say from WoK. In this, I think when Dalinar is on the Tower with Taravangian, he will find the words, intrinsically know them, and have access to Honor's power to Ascend. At this point, I think an important decision would be if Dalinar would forgive his past self fully, and if he would be willing to Ascend. Irregardless of whether this happens, I am completely and utterly sure he will Bondsmith back Gavilar and Nohadon for one final conversation to end the arc and help him find the words and make his choice.

I think you are seriously underestimating Navani. It is irrelevant if the tower knocks out Skybreakers, while she is in the Tower, Navani is essentially impossible to kill, unless they give the Sibling anti-light. Plus, you are also discounting that the Sibling fundamentally is the Tower. Now they are at full strength, I would imagine that the Sibling could just control the pressure in the Tower to squash invading Skybreakers.

I think Thaylen City is extremely defensible only so long as the ships are allowed under no circumstances to land. The Thaylen City is not built for land warfare, if the singers land, they have already lost. Using this knowledge, the logical conclusion if for the Thaylen forces to find a way to destroy the ships before they manage to land. One way I have been thinking about is making Windrunners bombing squadrons. As Kmakl points out in RoW, conventional ships are easy prey for aerial attacks, as the Skybreakers also proved. Therego, I would hypothesize that if the Lightweavers were to make the Windrunners invisible, then the Windrunners could bomb the Thaylen ships. It is unclear if Roshar has conventual explosives, but I would personally suggest that they make void light anti-voidlight explosives and drop them into the fleets to sink them. Even if they are not able to do this, even lashing huge rocks downwards into the ships should be able to destroy them.

I have always really supported the theory that Lirin is qualified to ascend to Honor. He takes his Oaths as a surgeon infinitely seriously, and is probably the most principled character in the Cosmere. This also ties in just a little bit with SF calling Kal son of Tanavast, and him calling Tien and Oroden that "depending" per WoB. I think that is is because Lirin is a very similar man to Tanavast.

Wouldn't it be in Hoid's best interest to utterly destroy the Stormfather, and this apparent remnant of Honor's power. After that, wouldn't there not be any piece of Honor's power large enough to negotiate Odium's release.

I say if Szeth was to ascend to them both, his interpretation of the Oaths and Honor would be something very close to Vengeance or Retribution. After all, his entire Crusade this book is for vengeance against the Shin Shamans.

Another potential option is trying to teach Rysn and Invested art like Soulcasting, or giving her a bond. The Sleepless certainly would not agree, and it would be extraordinarily dangerous, but she would be the most powerful Soulcaster in the Cosmere, and rain fire down on the fleet.

I would definitely agree that Cultivation is playing a big game that far exceeds what we currently know. However, I think he chapters show she was very surprised on Taravangian's attitudes once he became Vessel. He was talking about murdering other Shards, so it is in her best interest for him to be defeated.

I was really disappointed by this loophole, if you can call it that. I mean, the Alethi legal code shouldn't even apply to the rest of Roshar, especially considering the Dalinar is king of Urithiru, not Alethkar. To me, this whole thing is really shaky and doesn't make much sense. However, I believe that Frost's Sister who I now really want to see in SP5 was wrong. Taravangian is playing a much bigger game. Plus, from a purely logical standpoint, this cannot be The loophole. The Azimir army was sent before any of this began, and I don't see how the Skybreakers force was mobilized in just a day. I think that was just Rayse being aggressive, not the loophole, since the Azimir army launched before the Contract. Also, Cultivation is such an idiot. All she does is a big lore dump, and doesn't decide to tell Dalinar that Taravangian of all people is the Vessel.

I mean, you are definitely right, but it is all irrelevant regardless. They have ten days, so I find it unlikely to have a big emergence in Willshaping yet. I think that's back half material.

I wouldn't take Mraize holding Raysium off the table just yet, depending on how much he dealt with Raboniel off screen, although that makes him a beacon to Sibling. However, I would say that he will probably do as stated above, and try to make Shallan do all the hard work. The man is not an idiot, and he will make all his decisions based only on his mission. I say he has already left the tower, and has a force of Ghostbloods reinforcements trying to get through Shadesmar to help him.

From a Renaissance siege perspective, I think think there is a lot they can do. Assuming the armies drop off right outside the cities, then make camp to start the siege, I see the coalition able to actually do quite a lot. I think one problem for the coalition is to make enough equipment to make vast amounts of anti-voidlight. However, I think a top priority if to start making some truly massive instruments to blast out anti-voidlight Rhythm. Another thing I don't think the Coalition had tried yet is to have large assemblies of bells and people clamoring to the Rhythm of Panic, which might help to demoralize regular attackers, after all, every bit helps. Next, their top priority is fundamentally just to hold out till the deadline. I would say then you have to do Hannibal-esque tactics, doing things like burning supplies and poisoning water supplies. As for Radiant warfare, below is what each Order could do. Windrunners: Their primary duty is to fight Heavenly Ones and Skybreakers. However, I do think reverse lashing waves of stones into the enemy camp could be decent. Dustbringers: There are not a whole lot of them, but I would use them as their true use as sappers to wreck enemy camps. Edgedancers: Besides using abrasion to slide through for sabotage, they should basically just heal. Truthwatchers: They can heal, but I would say their primary duty should be to weaponize light. I would have ginormous wattages going into an enemy camp, because an enemy who has not slept is far easier to fight. Lightweavers: I would just have them cause a ton of panicking illusions of fires and disasters assaulting the camp. Elsecallers: Jasnah might be our only canon example. However, I would say Elsecallers as a rule should try to Soulcast things. My go to would be to Soulcast the air above the camps into pure oxygen, theb ignite it. Besides that, they could probably erect massive walls to the cities. Willshapers: Irrelevant Stonwards: They would be big in building defenses and ditches. Otherwise, I would set a team of them to try to melt and resolidify the ground around the thunder last to disable it. Bondsmith: They could do a lot.

I wouldn't call Male at all sane, but he is probably the most sane of the heralds we have seen. In some ways, he reminds me a lot of Victor Hugo's Javert in Les Miserables. He is utterly dedicated to the law because he believes it the only moral qualifier. I think that Nale's big problem is that he had no real respect of the law, but he feels obliged to follow this. This is seen with him trying to find a way to have Venli kill Gavilar legally.

Fair enough point. However, I wonder if instead giving them anti-Voidlight would either cure them of Odium's Investiture corruption, or destroy them.

I think he probably could. Cultivation has no actual body, and he knows attacking her does her no harm. I think he probably could.

The way I see it, there is no way they can defend all three cities. Maybe they could do two, on a good day, but one attack is going to get through. The issue obviously is that that gives them access to a corrupted Oathgate to Urithiru. I would say that they have to abandon Narak, but in doing so use anti-Stormlight on that Oathgate spren to cover their backs.

I have a feeling that Hoid just isn't going to play nicely with Cultivation. I wouldn't be surprised if he punches her like Kelsier.

To this regard, I believe the terms of the deal said that Dalinar represents everyone in the Coalition. If Todium gets the Coalition to reject him, then does the deal hold?

I think that this is all irrelevant in the simple fact that I really doubt that Adolin could ever beat Dalinar. He was the Blackthorn, and now he is Bondsmith, he can demolish Adolin any day of the week. Nor do I think that Sanderson is going a "Dalinar can't kill Adolin arc". Instead, if he goes through with it, I believe Dalinar will honestly kill Adolin, then either go into exile, or finally give Odium his pain, which let's Taravangian do what he wanted all along. I believe this is the key, it is not Dalinar breaking the terms, rather, it is Taravangian putting Dalinar into a position so overrun with pain, he surrenders to Odium.

I am shocked. To begin, I really doubt that Cultivation will tell Dalinar anything. She has gone this long while lying to everyone, I think she will have some other nonsense. If she does tell him, I honestly just want Dalinar to punch her in the face and say "After all the grief you've given us all, you were imbecilic enough to give Storming Taravangian a Shard!!!" Is there any evidence that some of the Fused counted are anything but Lighteweavings made by the masked ones. While I get more and more Fused are waking, I kind of think that that many Fused has not been at all previously supported. As for the parables, I do not think that any of the language stuff is literal, it is a highly symbolic book, literally in a parable. I don't think that is canon Nohadon. I did not think Fen was nearly so old. I don't recall her being described as old at all in the books, especially when Taravangian's age was very highlighted. The Hoid scene was amazing to me, but I am questioning why he was doing a steel bubble for no reason. I took it as him basically doing a systems check on all his powers, which includes his physicality changing. I wouldn't be surprised if he did some Lightweavers stuff or other magics in the background. I think that the Hoid stuff is way more important that the three imminent invasions. As for who he wants to talk too, my question is who in the Cosmere knows as much as Hoid. I figure you have the original vessels, some dragons, aether's, and maybe Silver light people. My money is on this being the Valor name-drop.

I think Todium is going to found Communism in the Cosmere. I think he is having a really hard time balancing his inclinations. Is it possible to that Ala is a Skaze?

What I would find to be interesting with this is why the Oathgate spren chose their state of life to begin with, and if the pact was more focused with Honor, Cultivation, or both. I would say it is fair that this is a new age for spren, and then having a choice for freedom from Sja-Anat. However, I do believe that none of these spren have the ability to act against an oath made, which would make me believe that a Radiant spren leaving their Radiant may render them similar to a deadeye. However, I would say that these barriers can be removed by Sja-Anat's enlightenment. My primary question is why the Oathgate spren chose this fate to begin with, and what changed them, as well as the minds of all of these spren after millennia. We know that the change in Odium's vessel led to the Wind regaining her voice, so I think this could also be leading to regular spren becoming far more open to change. This leads me to my ultimate point, which is that this may be a cause of collapse for the Radiants. It was said in the Eila Steele that Sja-Anat was most feared, and I think that this is because she can grant spren greater freedoms to choose, and violate their fundamental nature of Honor's oaths. She could allow spren previously bound to Radiants who could not abandon the bond without conflicting with their innate intent to leave their bonds.

I think that you might overestimate spren agency. We know that all spren are derived from the Shards, or perhaps Adonalsium with the Wind and whatnot. Regardless, we know that the investiture of a Shard is completely dominated by its Intent. This will eventually bind even the Vessel. I would say that spren have freedom within some range, but not enough freedom to do something against their fundamental Shard-derived Intent.

Another thing to be noted is the very nature of spren and the CR, which Brandon based off the Theory of the Forms. I would say that she changes the very form (spiritual ideal) of the spren, then even their physical forms change to match (Glys). But we know that spren are also living ideas, as said above. I guess a possibility is that Sja-Anat could just do drastically change people's perceptions of the spren that they themselves change.