Leuthie

My guess: The primary conflict in Book 5 will be fallout from the consequences of the Contest, not the Contest itself. This fallout will be Roshar-wide and will effect each storyline, both inhibiting and providing the solutions to the other storylines. That would put the Contest in Part 2 at the latest. I'm guessing the Contest will be the end of Part 1. It's also possible that the Contest happens in Part 3 and the back half and Sanderlanch will be all about the fallout. One of those two.

There are a couple of other quotes, but I can't locate them. In any case, I think that Brandon is making it clear that whatever an Unmade was originally is dead. You can't remake an Unmade anymore than you can "heal" a zombie in a zombie flick. You can re-unmake an Unmade -- infuse it with Stormlight, for instance -- but the result will just be another flavor of Unmade. I'm guessing the process of Voidlight infusion results in a complete loss of Identity, making "healing" the resulting damage impossible. Ultimately, to undo the process, you'd have to recreate the original Identity and Connections (after kicking out the Voidlight), which is probably more difficult that just making the spren from scratch. I think this WOB is apt: I don't think this quote was ever used in the service of an Unmade question, but I'm sure he would use it given the opportunity. To "remake" an Unmade would be a process more convoluted that what was used to create the original. It would be much easier and more likely successful to kill the Unmade, then make a new spren.

Holy hell, you people don't know what anger management issues are. Getting angry when directly provoked, then not actually doing anything about it, is exactly NOT anger management issues. In fact, someone who doesn't get angry when provoked is more likely to have anger management issues. When they finally explode... Adolin didn't explode when he killed Sadeas. In fact, I remember his thoughts being relatively deliberate. He grabbed a knife and shoved it in Sadeas' eye to remove a threat. There was very little in the way of anger in the act. A little, but he didn't get so pissed that he couldn't control himself. He controlled himself just fine. Glaze over? Gloss over? The only evidence in the entire series that Adolin isn't the most controlled person on Roshar is when he killed Sadeas. Even that act, taken as an act of pure rage, wouldn't be enough to make a good case for Adolin having anger management issues. Sadeas basically stabbed himself in the eye with Adolin's dagger.

Nightblood killing a Vessel tells me that no Physical being is powerful enough to be safe.

If Nightblood can't dent a Shard, why would it bother a Dawnshard? Spoilered for Dawnshard spoilers:

Given the large gap between books, I'm leaning toward Stormlight 5 ending with a big relief, all pressing conflicts resolved, etc. However, the resolution will come at a huge cost with irrevocable change that will foreshadow the conflict for the back 5. Based on Death Rattles, both the Highstorm and the Everstorm will be stopped, leaving Roshar without a source of Stormlight and crem, but free of Odium with Humans and Singers united. A new, completely different challenge heading into the break, and an end to the conflict that defined the first 5 books.

A Shard's Vessel was touched by Nightblood and killed before the Shard's Vessel, who holds the power and expanded abilities of a Shard of Adonalsium, could react. There ain't no hope for any other Invested being to deal with Nightblood. Hide him behind aluminum and throw him into the vacuum of space. Of course, he has mind powers that would probably get someone to pick him up in deep space and bring him back to keep destroying evil, so...

Taravangian didn't put his compassionate-days self in stressful situations, so it was surprising to see the bravery he felt when subjected to this one. He wasn't rioted, he was just surprised. I think Brandon was just highlighting the benefits of the other side of Cultivation's gift to Taravangian. Big T's biggest problem with Cultivation's gift was assuming the big-smarty days were the gift and tossing aside the big-feely ones. Cultivation probably meant for his time dealing with the big emotions to have prepared him to fight the worst of the Shard Odium's calls for destruction and retribution. Instead, he just sat in a room and cried on his "dumb" days. People can experience big swings in emotion without there being a rioter nearby. Especially if they have extreme mental health conditions or have had their mental and emotional states altered by gods.

Both Dalinar and Kaladin are set up to die (or Ascend, which isn't all that different) in Book 5. Their major character arcs are done, preparing the way for a good, narratively satisfying death. Both are being sent to situations that further suggest that they will die: Dalinar is challenging a god, and Kaladin is being sent to heal someone just short of being a god. I really don't think predicting either death is much of a stretch. Both of them have also been built up toward something huge over the 4 books. The death (I doubt both of them will die) will have to be in service of something worthy of that build up.

I've theorized that the non-sapient unmade are "coagulated" lesser spren. The "made" version of the spren were separate entities and attracted to the thing they represented, like all other lesser spren. The "unmade" version are singular entities that create a twisted version of the thing they were once attracted to. Nergaoul could very well be the result of Odium "unmaking" determination-spren, turning spren that were once attracted to sustained effort into Unmade that create "The Thrill" when someone goes into a mode that would lead to sustained effort. This has nothing to do with your theory. Your statement about missing spren just reminded me. I have to make a list of missing spren that should exist. I think the lesser spren that make up a Radiant's armor have a relationship with the the bonded spren, and what Syl is doing with windspren is just part of that relationship. Spren that "come into being" due to some event probably takes more than a few years of hero cult status. Kaladin's deeds might result in Kaladin-spren if the legend becomes ubiquitous and continues for about 1000 years.

It's really neither day nor night. The sun is always visible, but it gives off no light and shadows reach toward it. At least on Roshar.

Yeah, I didn't look at a Physical map and just thought of the water I knew to be in the north. Forgot about the Reshi. *edit: My 666 post, so the devil made me do it.

"There's a strange storm brewing on the horizon here. I don't like it." I've tried to call Red Herring on thing's Brandon and team has inserted into the stories before. It's never a Red Herring. With ROW also including the information that the Everstorm drifted through the Cognitive Realm prior to making its way to Roshar's Physical Realm, this is Isaac basically telling us that Nexus of Imagination leads to Braize. Nexus of Truth is adjacent to Shinovar. Where the Ashynites ended up. Nexus of Transition is drawn in Purelake, not on the edge of the map, despite there being plenty of room to put the words on the edge of the map. This seems interesting in and of itself, and might explain a bit why there are 3 Nexuses and only 2 inhabitable planets.

Hate isn't an emotion. It's a state of mind made up of several different emotions. It leads from and to these emotions. In the same way grief goes through a defined system of emotions, rage does so, as well. Trigger, escalation, crisis, recovery and depression. Each of these stages carry their own range of emotions. The final one is depression. Void. The complexity of emotions Odium likes is due to the nature of rage, not because Odium is the Shard of Passions. Every Shard has emotions associated with it. Odium doesn't get them all. The scenes with Taravangian make this explicitly clear. The Shard wants to destroy and wreak havoc and terror. These things the Shard likes, but they also result in more Hatred from those who were hurt by the havoc so the cycle can continue.

"God's divine wrath separate everything that would give it context" although I can't find the exact quote. I find that even more fearsome. Morality is fickle and mutable. Even Devotion could be a deadly shard without a backing morality. Besides, morality is provided to a Shard by the Vessel. The terrifying thing about Odium is that it is an emotion that shouldn't exist without the tempering of the entire spectrum of emotions. This is why the followers of Odium are called Voidbringers. There's nothing left when you've successfully followed Odium's Intent. At least Ruin has an end game in mind. Hate without context leads to complete emptiness.

You're totally right! It's the underlying principles that lead to Hemalurgy that apply here. Stabbing something with an Invested object creates a Connection between those two things in the three Realms. In this case, Nightblood just indiscriminately sucked in Investiture from Rayse through this Connection. In Hemalurgy, there's more focused Intent employed to surgically remove specific pieces of Investiture. Good catch!

@Thaumium The interactions between Taravangian and his forces and Taravangian and the good guys will be different than what they would have been with Rayse, no doubt. There will be some opportunities to show this in Book 5, I'm sure. However, Brandon isn't going to suddenly make Book 5 about Odium. It's always been about the viewpoint characters, human vs singer (and the allies on each side), Heralds and Radiants, spren and mortal. The change in Vessel won't change that. Nor will the war suddenly end. Taravangian will let the inertia of the war continue, and may not even have any ability to stop it without hurting his chances of breaking free from being bound to Braize and Roshar. That's still Odium's first goal, and will also be Taravangian's. He can't save the Cosmere from foolish Vessels if he's stuck on Roshar. So nothing will change about the broad story, just some of the details.

The death of Rayse was more about Nightblood than it was about any Physical, Cognitive or Spiritual aspect that T and Rayse were in. Nightblood kills in all three, so it doesn't matter. That's why Nightblood was there. It's such a strongly Invested entity that it was pulled in when Rayse pulled in T. T stabbed Rayse and principles of Hemalurgy then applied. Nightblood created a Connection between itself and Rayse/Odium. It pulled in everything Connected until it was sated. Rayse put his own soul too close to an Investiture Black Hole and had it sucked in. Hell, Rayse's body wasn't turned to Investiture. It was burned to unrecognizable. Another interesting thought I had: The burning isn't even from Nightblood. Nightblood doesn't burn things. Rayse's body looked burned because Rayse saw his own human aspect as burned away; the equivalent of Kaladin's slave brand.

@Alich Check out this WOB: https://wob.coppermind.net/events/460/#e14622 Rayse failed to turn Dalinar and Kaladin and was basically done as a bad guy. Too much failure in too short a time removes the efficacy of the villain, so he had to be removed. Taravangian will change the relationships between Odium and his forces, and Odium and the good guys in many ways. However, Odium will still be the same villain it has always been. Taravangian pretty much confirms this in his Vessel viewpoint sections. His motivations are different, but the effect will be the same. Taravangian wants to save everyone in the Cosmere since he's assumed that everyone is safe on Roshar since he's holding Odium. His hubris will allow him to create/continue havoc on Roshar anyway without harming his vision of "saving" Roshar. So in the end, there won't be much difference between Taravangian as Odium and Rayse as Odium.

WOB has confirmed (more or less) that Odium didn't read any Breaths. Since he didn't identify Breaths by what memories they held, he must have excised Breaths based on another criteria. The only criteria that makes any sense is temporal. So Odium removed Breaths that held the last few minutes of Wit's memories to remove the conversation. That's it. I suspect that perfect pitch doesn't just snap into place with the 200th Breath. At 200 Breaths, your pitch recognition and creation ability is perfected. Breaths prior to that improve those abilities. Wit is old enough and experienced enough to recognized his current level of pitch recognition. He can probably identify how many Breaths he's holding (up to and including 200) by how well he recognizes pitch. Hence his use of the word "interfering" instead of "lost". Basically, the time after the final encounter is just meant to inform us that Wit is aware of the loss of memory without spelling it out.

The Unmade were among the first things Odium created, most likely. Instead of using all his own Investiture, he corrupted existing spren. He wasn't planning on sticking around. Kill a Shard or two and split. Then Bondsmith and Honor bound him to Braize. A few thousand years of struggle have led to a bit more Investment in Roshar than he was planning. It's not incoherent. It's the difference between theory and practice. In theory, Odium doesn't want to Invest himself too deeply so as to get stuck in a single system. In practice, he was stuck anyway.

Opportunity. We saw how he bonded a spren. Elhokar's death while saying the first Oath stranded Design in the Physical Realm. Wit took advantage of the situation to get Design to bond with him. He didn't bond with a spren previously because such an opportunity hadn't come up.

Expectations going in was that ROW would suffer from the same problem that a lot of middle books in a trilogy suffer from. Middle Game Syndrome? It has less to do with being a second book of a trilogy than it does the book having to set everything up for the finale. ROW had to put all of the chess pieces that were planned in the first 3 books in place for the endgame. Plotting, pacing, and characterization can become secondary to making sure everything is set up for the final book. Every flaw I thought ROW had could be explained by it being the penultimate book of the first 5. I think Brandon did a great job, but RoW does replace WoK as my least favorite SA book. I don't think this is an unpopular take, but...yeah

Do you think Hoid holds his Oaths to be more important than his Quest? When he needs to leave, if he hasn't found a way to get Design off-world, he will break Oaths and leave. "He will watch Roshar burn if he has to".

Why are we even assuming the Nightwatcher isn't mobile? Its Physical form is a nymph-like woman. Why wouldn't she be able to leave her forest? The Sibling is the spren of a specific building that doesn't move. We don't even know what the Nightwatcher is the spren of, but I can't imagine it's something that's stuck in one place like Urithiru. The current Cultivation "training" program (the boons and curses as a way to learn about humanity) that seems to be going on with Nightwatcher takes place in a single place. That doesn't even imply that Nightwatcher can't move.