Fyodor32768

Because Adolin is beloved of all three major characters so his death will have emotional impact. He's a goner.

My guess is that she can access the spiritual realm because she is the child of a herald.

But she didn't know that Pattern was a shardblade at the time, there would be no need for a fugue state or for her thoughts to trail off. The reason she trails off is that she can't acknowledge that *Pattern* was her shardblade. She had to get close because she couldn't attach to Pattern. When she thinks about *why* she couldn't attach to Pattern, she trails off because she refuses to consciously accept that Pattern is her shardblade until the end of the book (it would also obviously spoil the revelation of the series's most triumphant scene of the readers knew this in advance). To circle back to the original point, regardless of which blade she uses to open the gate I think that it's generally the case that what we're seeing with Shallan is not progressing the same way as with a normal radiant so we can't draw the same conclusions about her progression from her shards and abilities. Generally many of the other radiant orders have not shown the same kinds of effects and specific progressions as the windrunners (big triumphant boom, blade at third oath, etc). Nothing visible to the reader really happens when Lift says her two oaths. Lift makes a shardweapon in the chapter before her third oath. Dalinar uses the Stormfather to operate the gate before his third oath.

Where does she wonder about Pattern being in two places at once? At the time she didn't know that Pattern was her shardblade so she wouldn't have thought about it.

She wouldn't be able to open the gate with Testament-dead blades don't work. She needed a living blade.

For what it's worth I think that Shallan's progression is supposed to be roughly following Kaladin's, with her manifesting her second ideal/first truth (killed father) at the end of book one, third/ideal second truth at the end of book 2 (killed mother) and fourth ideal/third Truth at the end of book 3 (deadeyed Testament). She doesn't seem to really be gaining shards in the same way, possibly because of her past progression. She can use Pattern as a blade before her second truth.* * I know that there is some speculation that she is using Testament in WOR/WOK but during the transfer portal scene she calls for Pattern and he shows up immediately.

I think that the speculation I've seen is that Shallan goes to find Ba-Ado-Mishram to free her. This leads her back to her home or family, with the idea being that BAM was the unmade influencing her family. We possibly meet Shallan's mother who was returned to Roshar when she (mother) broke from torture. Via new memories or from Chana we find out how Shallan was created and why she was so appealing to the Spren. Her fifth truth would be her identity and/or that she's responsible for the Desolation and collapse of the Oathpact by sending her mother back to Braize to be broken.

There has some reasonably persuasive speculation based on published works and Stormlight 5 that Shallan is the daughter of the herald Chanarach. I won't recount them but links to the relevant threads are below. We have in the most recent Q&A the following excerpt. https://wob.coppermind.net/events/526-youtube-spoiler-stream-6/ This is the first acknowledgement I think that Shallan has abilities that go beyond what other Lightweavers can do and that it's for a "distinct reason" that we can "put together." This would seem to be a nod to the fact that Shallan is the daughter of a Herald and thus has access to the spiritual realm. We've seen other examples of this, like Ishar being sensitive to the spiritial realm and temporarily regaining sanity when oaths are sworn (same with Nale, who kind of wakes up when Lift swears her oaths). Thoughts?

Maybe because they can fly places.

Other than the inconsistencies between prologue "stormfather" and the other one (who acts differently in a bunch of different ways and shows a bunch of different abilities/behaviors/interests) we haven't seen the Stormfather lie. He doesn't know or understand what information to volunteer but he doesn't lie.

I'm not saying that we won't get a bad ending but also possible to have Odium lose but have an ongoing fight against the Fused, Unmade, etc. The RoW Odium/Dalinar meetup has Odium saying that he can't bind his minions.

eaten by chasmfiend offscreen. Mentioned briefly and forgotten.

The reason that the "Stormfather" talking to Gavilar knows this and the Stormfather talking to Dalinar does not is that the first one is Ishar, who forged the oathpact and is intimately much more knowledgeable about the status of the heralds. The real Stormfather also incorrectly assumed that Taln broke(it is confirmed by author he did not). My assumption is that the real Stormfather can sense that the Oathpact is broken (or that someone gave in) but doesn't know all the details of what is happening with the heralds. He doesn't know that Chanarach was killed by her daughter and sent to Braize six years earlier and was the one who gave in to the torture. So he assumes that Taln finally gave in and that caused the oathpact to end.

This is a general explanation of what spren are. None of this really explains why regular phenomena are personified by spren on Roshar and not other places. Different entities have been splintered-there are spren like entities on other planets (such as Skaze/Seons) . Most of these spren on Roshar are not splinters of honor (other than honorspren) and are not caused by honor's splintering. There isn't any explanation in the above as to why fear and glory and sickness and other concepts are embodied by spren on Roshar and not other places.

Is there a good in-universe explanation for why regular phenomena, anger, emotions, sickness, etc, all manifest as spren on Roshar? It would seem to be the kind of thing that would have been covered in one of the books or interview archives but I don't see anything. We don't really even see worldhoppers commenting on it.

Adolin, who will be odium's champion, and be killed by his father.

So I suspect that it's going to be something along the lines of protecting even those who are his enemies, or eschewing killing to protect.Something that like becoming law, is larger than the frame of his previous oaths, that maybe positions him in a fundamentally different way than people who have only sworn earlier oaths. There has been an ongoing theme of him not wanting to hurt parshmen, questioning the logic of killing to protect, or recognizing that his enemies are also protecting from their own perspective. As well as his fights with his father about killing to protect. So I think that it's going to be something that touches on those issues. Something that moves him outside the frame of killing some people to save others. I don't think it's going to be something a long the lines of protecting himself or allowing himself to be protected-that's too close to what we've seen with Teft and his third oath.