Leuthie

Kaladin is the Windrunner Herald. He should stay the Windrunner Herald.

Radiants have a much more direct path to intentionally use available Investiture through their spren. Allomancy requires "asking for Investiture" through the act of burning metals. They have no ready way to make use of otherwise available Investiture. Currently, metals are easier to obtain than free Investiture. Although we've seen stored Dor being used in Scadrial on screen, so that's not a permanent imbalance.

It seems that Retribution is allowing his investiture to be stored and used by Singers. This means it can be stolen and used by Radiants and in fabrials, since those things can also be powered by Breaths.

Edgli was denied the power of the gods when Adonalsium was whole. It's a hint as to why Adonalsium was Shattered. That's it. Edgli was denied magic before getting a Shard, so now she just wants to give magic to others and stay out of everything. I don't think it's any deeper than that. A planet that is 12,000 years old wouldn't have much of a fossil record and we already know Endowment created Nalthis. And just because the Manywar occurred in the recent past isn't evidence that Endowment waited to create Nalthis. History often has breaks. Vo being the First Returned while discovering Hallandren and Tears of Edgli is a very convenient confluence of events to begin a history while forgetting all previous history. Vo wasn't the first Returned and the history of Nalthis didn't begin with his discovery of the current superpower.

Does anyone alive besides Taravangian actually know who Gavinor is? Seriously. Only Dalinar, Odium, Stormfather and Gavinor were up there. Dalinar and Stormfather are dead. Who else knows who Gavinor is much less what he said (he didn't actually do anything). Dude has no parents, one dead grandparent, one frozen grandparent, and no one knows who he is except a god, the only being he actually knows. The only other major relationship that could affect Gavinor is Lift. I think that's where Brandon will go in the break. Lift and Gavinor

A group of 4 people saved an entire population of spren, 1 guy forced a Shard to have to protect himself from all of the other Shards to give Roshar some breathing room, 1 guy with a sword killed Shard's vessel and took up the Shard. Stormlight Archive has shown how much power people have over Shards.

You missed some things, then. Urithiru still works. The sun was shining on Azir. Szeth was working as a farmer in Shinovar. His wife wrote some of the chapter headings. Taravangian kept his word on allowing lands that weren't under his control at the end of the 10 days to remain free. He will probably try to create at least 2 sides to fight against each other for the purpose of developing an army. He needs both sides to be strong for this. He can create new storms to distribute Retribution light; just to his side or to everyone. He does need to solve the crem problem. In any case, Roshar wasn't destroyed. Completely transformed, yes, but not destroyed.

Azir, Shinovar and Urithiru will grown their own food. No one is in the Stone Age. They now have time and space to develop technology and stronger cultures. There's 16 years (I think) between book 5 and book 6, so a lot will change. And Taravangian still wants to develop an army, so he'll be pushing for technology and fabrials that will lead to military improvements. There are a ton of directions that Brandon can go with Roshar's development.

Syl herself accepted one of Kaladin's Oaths. I would guess that the advancement of Oaths is now entirely within the bond, now that Stormfather is dead and Sibling is in stasis. Ishar might be listening. Taravangian won't be allowing freely available Retribution light anywhere. However, I'll bet advancing Oaths will still result in a mini-Perpendicularity. But none of this means much as there isn't Investiture available to use Radiant abilities or even self-heal. They get weapons and armor, which is great. Taravangian will still be able to make Fused and control Singers using his bonds. He'll still make anti-light to provide weapons against spren. But I don't think he cares much who wins. He wants to create an army, so he'll encourage fighting and the development of weapons on both sides. But he can only do this while not being attacked by other Shards. I'm theorizing that Retribution light will become available to all at some point. It serves Taravangian's goals to set the magic users free and against each other. The more balanced the sides, the more warfare development there will be.

The coloring of Honor as the Almighty when he turns out to be a dork named Tanner who was in over his head trying to control a power that wanted him to keep all promises while trying to imprison another power that wants to kill everything and also spend time with his girlfriend is a huge thing to get over. It's okay. Many of us already know all of the Shards and Vessels are FOS. UNITE THEM was a toddler Shard trying to tell Dalinar what it thought was a solution. It wasn't wrong, since if Dalinar had succeeded in uniting the nations of Roshar, Odium may not have been able to convince all of them to go to his side during the 10 days.

Wit/Hoid/Midius/Cephandrius has changed so many times, he probably doesn't have a true sense himself or who he was during the scouring of Alaswha. The Connections are so tangled, even the Spiritual Realm itself has a hard time piecing them together. He is a real person, born naturally:

If Sanderson had pulled off this ending and made everyone happy and excited, he'd be considered the best writer of his age, not just the most prolific. This ending is meant to make you hate it. Every main character is left diminished. The world is left diminished. The enemy basically won. The bright side offered is a Cosmere-wide one. Everything in the back 5 books will be different. No Radiants. No Stormlight. No High Storm. An even stronger Shard in near total control, a control only held back by an Oathpact made between a dead god and people who have failed in this task before. Any author that could make readers excited by that ending is a master. Brandon is merely prolific.

When the remaining forces can take care of the remaining Fused without help of the Heralds, the Heralds return to hold the Fused there. I'm guessing this is mostly when all of the Fused are gone and there are no willing Singers to take more.

They're tied to Braize. Reference the Epilogue where Hoid just appears on Scadrial after being killed on Roshar. No need for "travel". When Fused die, they appear on Braize (or now the Everstorm). When a Fused returns, it simply appears in the body of a willing Singer. When a Herald breaks, they all just appear on Roshar in newly formed bodies. Existing magics just make this happen. No traveling required.

Their bodies are regenerated via the power Honor, which the new Oathpact safeguards. Whatever is done to their bodies is irrelevant. Their souls can't be touched. The problem with torture was always in their minds. Hence why Taln never once broke. He was able to separate his mind from what his body was enduring. The new situation removes the mind from the body. Think Dalinar's body being in the Physical Realm while his mind was experience Stormfather curated stories in Way of Kings. 100% sure Ishar got the idea from the mechanics of those visions. In short, it doesn't matter what the Fused do to the Herald's bodies on Braize. They'll always be rebuilt to normal. Being detached from the pain inflicted allows the minds to stay whole and unaffected. So when they Return, they don't even know their bodies were being tortured.

His rigid book structure was a great idea. However, he has a tendency to explode his outlines as he writes. See Mistborn Era 2 4 book series being born from what started as a single volume he planned on the side. Rhythm of War had plot issues that probably came from having to get a lot of pieces in place to make book 5 work. This is textbook "middle book syndrome". It's my belief that Brandon had way too many outline items to hit in Book 5 and no way to break it into multiple volumes. This is the first book he's written where you can see the outline. In RoW he sacrificed pacing to get things done. In this book, he had to sacrifice character voice and even his own author's voice to facilitate required info dumps. On top of this, he probably had to scrap a lot of detail, leading to the "YA" feeling. He also pretty much threw temporal continuity out the window at several points just to make sure everything got done. We're seeing the compromises that a storyteller like Brandon is willing to make to tell stories that novelists like GRRM and Rothfuss refuse to even consider.

I forget that she never wanted to be on Roshar in the first place. She was there because Tanavast convinced her to be there. With Tanavast completely dead and Honor in Taravangian's hands, she has no reason to stay. I was speaking of Koravellum Avast there. The power of Cultivation is going to want to stay in the game since the bulk of its "Cultivating" is on Roshar. It also seems like Kora herself isn't the type to fully bounce from so many things she loves so quickly. Nor is she the type to spend so much time in a place and not end up with things she loves. She'll be back for the back half. As for her plan: Dalinar taking up Honor or giving up Honor to temper Odium are both good outcomes. I believe she's satisfied with the current situation, but wishes Taravangian turned out better.

There was no perfect plan. Every attempt by Honor to make deals made the situation with Odium worse. Cultivation's gambit was for Taravangian to use the extreme emotional intelligence she gifted him with to better direct Odium. There were possible futures where this worked, so she gave it a shot. One of the futures where it didn't work happened. However, Odium is no longer just Roshar's problem now. The Cosmere has to take notice. She ran because she was in direct danger if she stayed. She didn't run because she was giving up. She'll be in the back 5 books. No doubt in my mind.

The event was the shattering of the Shattered Plains. Honor attacked Odium and a resonance was created with Odium's perpendicularity that destroyed the largest city and created the Shattered Plains. See Honor's story chapters.

Batter was following Odium for the same reason Ishar picked up Odium's perpendicularity and used it: they're all insane. The new arrangement will allow them to heal and make decisions with right minds. I'm sure there will be issues, but I don't think Battar is special in all that.

Taln still uses Investiture to perform his abilities, and is made up of Investiture. Nightblood would suck him away as easily as he would anyone else.

I have to disagree here. Cultivation fled because Retribution would have destroyed everything related to her if she stayed. She was responsible for him having to destroy Kharbranth, after all. She rolled the dice on Taravangian and it came up craps. His viewpoints were meant to show him vacillating between becoming what Cultivation wanted and becoming worse than Rayse.

Taravangian is Machiavelli He's a hypocrite as a secondary characteristic to him being radically consequentialist. "Ends justify the means" was something he believed in life (he was killing people to get information via their death rattles) and seems to be the primary tenet of his "godhood." He agreed with everything he was arguing against Jasnah about. His goal was to convince Fen, so using his own belief in consequentialism against Jasnah's belief in consequentialism just made sense, even if it was the definition of hypocritical. His destruction and mind wiping Kharbranth just to foil Cultivation is further proof of his mental state. I fully believe their was a chance he would have become the Odium that Cultivation wanted him to be. He turned as far from that path as he possibly could.

Surgebinding had limits imposed by deals Honor and Cultivation made with Odium. Those deals are all gone now. There are no Radiant orders or Oaths. The remaining spren are access points to Surges with no outside checks, aside from whatever Retribution imposes. There also isn't any free, transportable light. Post-book 5 is the wild wild west of Roshar magic. Herald flashbacks might include on screen Radiants we didn't get to see, but going forward, the Radiant system is nearly gone.

Fused and Radiants were playing in a pool with limits imposed by Honor and Odium. The access and limits to Surges are now fully defined by Retribution and whatever old spren the Heralds can protect. There are no hard limits. Mishram and Sja-anat are the real wildcards in this.