Malim

Frankly I think that whoever the Kandra is, we will find her somewhere around Hoid. We know he contacted Harmony, and that Harmony was a little put off. Wouldn't it be in character for him to send a representative to keep an eye on Hoid? If nothing else, it might keep lines of communication open, something that Harmony does seem open to. In that light, however fun it would be for the Mink to be a Kandra, it doesn't quite fit. Personally, I would look for the Kandra a little closer to Urithiru, or at least the Alethi court.

While I like the idea of Zahel's Intent being that of a scholar, I don't think that it plays into Endowment's long game. Remember what she said: if Rayze/Odium becomes a problem, he will be dealt with. How do you deal with a Shard? Tying them to a system or Shattering them. He is currently bound to the system, but what if he gets out? That would leave Shattering as the only option as I doubt he would allow himself to be bound again. Here's the problem: would Endowment risk a direct confrontation in which she is just as likely to get Shattered as Odium is? Or even more likely to get Shattered as she is Invested and he isn't, and therefore has less raw power to bring to bear? She seems pretty confident regardless. Enter Zahel. He Returned, travelled, learned, and made Nightblood. A sword that destroys Investure, a sword that WoB states even Shards should fear. Is that the answer? Zahel was Returned as a fail safe. Yes, he gave up Nightblood, but he is still on Roshar. If he just wanted to avoid conflict, wouldn't it make sense for him to try to leave? I suspect that he has a larger role to play, one that he doesn't realize yet, but one that his Intent is driving him towards. *edit for spelling*

This. I think there is something big that we have been missing. Take the following theory as mainly speculation fueled by too much coffee, but here goes: Dalinar remembering Evi has nothing to do with Stormlight healing or a change in the specifics of what he asked for, it is a direct result of something Odium is doing. First, the point about Stormlight healing being the cause: From Oathbringer Chapter 24: This to me rules out Stormlight healing. That is an aspect of the bond that Dalinar has with the Stormfather. Now it is possible that the Stormfather has it wrong, but in the lack of anything else, I'm willing to take his word for it that the bond is not causing Dalinar's memories to return, at least until we know more. As to the Nightwatcher suddenly changing the Boon/Curse, or the specifics of what Dalinar asked for changing, as Navani points out this has never happened before: Oathbringer Chapter 24: Once again, to say something has never happened is not to say it never will, but in the lack of any other evidence, this is at least predictive. Lastly, there is this: Oathbringer Back cover: Many have speculated that the King is Dalinar. Putting this together, I would argue that his memories of Evi are something that is better left forgotten. Indeed, they might contain the catalyst for breaking the Radiants again. Now who would want this? Odium, and he knows about Dalinar. What is more, he is a Shard. He probably has the power to undo what the Nightwatcher did. From Oathbringer Chapter 4: What is more, there seems to be something wrong in Urithiru right now... Unmade, or Odium? In either case, there seems to be some power that is actively trying to derail the city. Bringing back Dalinar's memories and using them to break him would do a lot for that. TL;DR: Dalinar's memories returning are a result of Odium's influence.

@Darkness_ He had a brain tumor. I don't want to go into too much detail, but it was inoperable, and he knew it. He had wanted to talk about options for chemo, but then had decided to just let the disease run its course.

Gibletish = 9 letters. Gibberish = 9 letters. Unique letters used: G, I, B, L, E, T, S, H, R = 9 letters. Odium's shard number = 9. Hoid is Rayse confirmed.

"You may be able to outrun something that's chasing you, but you can't outrun something that's running inside you." Heard this from one of my patients years ago, and it has always stuck with me.

Aspren: Attracted by repetitive head pounding sensations, but take 30 minutes to manifest.

Sazed. He is better at figuring out the harmony. Who would be the better janitor: Odium or Syl?

I won't spoil anything for you but... suffice to say his arc is far from over. I think Book 3 might just surprise you.

As much as this idea is out of left field... I like it. OB is about Dalinar. I suspect that his wife will play a large part in the flashbacks, she would be in a position to know about Dalinar's Shard, and he wouldn't remember the book because of his curse/boon making it something "new"... It would be an interesting way to introduce us to Shshshsh without having a direct POV... Yep, I can definitely see Mr Sanderson doing something like this. Too bad we don't have enough info to even begin to decide if this is right though.

I seem to remember a WoB that implied that Odium had control over Lin. Looking through the database to find it. *edit* Found it

Lin Davar. He gets a lot of hate and rightfully so for everything that he did for his family. However, I can't forget that what started him down that path was an act that any good father would do: He was trying to protect his daughter from people that wanted to kill her. He fought tooth and nail to keep Shallan safe from her mother and "friend" who wanted to kill her for what she was becoming. When Shallan killed them, Lin let it be rumored that he was the murderer in order to keep protecting her. That lie not only destroyed his reputation, it destroyed his family and broke him so much that Odium could gain influence over him. To me this is the most tragic episode in the series so far. Yes, we can hate him for what he became, but as a father I will always have quite a bit of compassion and sorrow for the events that made him that way.

The main problem I see is the conservation of momentum that has been confirmed to be at play. Wouldn't increasing weight just before a push bring you to a virtual standstill? My physics is rusty, but it seems that while you might get an initial push by reducing weight and pushing, the momentum issue would keep you from truly flying.

Granted. Brandon goes for a walk in Australia. I wish for the ability to cook a decent pastry.

It is quite possible. Ten-Soon did just that when he stole Ore-Seur's blessing.

Personally, I think you are right on target. Though the Heralds were not required to make or follow any oaths, I think that the orders would most definitely have expected them to do so. In a way the KR were founded as an imitation of the Heralds, and as such they would have been seen as being the paragons of the ideals. Obviously they were not. I've actually seen theories around that the revelation that the Heralds had repudiated the Oath Pact, and were therefore not following any ideals, directly lead the the KR losing faith and caused the Recreance. Seems as good a theory as any to me.

Granted. You attract a Cryptic who completes all of your assignments in binary code. I wish for a quicker way to get a charcoal grill lit.

I see Jasnah as a fox. Sly, cunning, hard to catch or pin down, and yet quite dangerous when cornered. Szeth I think of as a jackyl: Graceful and cunning, definitely dangerous, but generally relegated to fighting over scraps. Lopen of course is a fiddler crab.

One thing that I find interesting is how vague the WoB is on "ramifications". While the discussion on social/legal ramifications is very interesting, I began to wonder if there are not darker ones as well. This has lead me down a dark line of thought. Here it is. "It is the nature of the magic. A broken soul has cracks into which something else can fit. Surgebindings, the powers of creation themselves; they can brace a broken soul, but they can also widen its fissures." WoR back dust jacket, my bolding. I see the murder of Sadeas as the point where Adolin starts to break. The fissures will only widen if Dalinar or Shallan, or even public opinion turns against him. At the very least, the thought of the problems that this will cause may lead his own guilt into widening them. This can lead down two paths. Either the fissures will be filled with a Nahel bond, or something else. The something else is what scares me. Odium knows that surgebindings are returning. He knows that the best way to bind him is to force a duel of champions. Probably, then he is looking to create his own champions. What would happen if Odium filled the cracks in Adolin's soul? Personally, I believe he did this with Shallan's father. In that case we all saw what it turned him into. Could the "ramifications" of Adolin's action be that Odium can now get a hold of him too? Instead of going down the path of Radiancy, could he instead be forced down the same dark hole as Shallan's father? Personally, I really don't want to see this happen, but I fear that it could.

Thanks for the replies. I hadn't seen the WoB on the nature of spren as cognitive/spiritual entities. That clears up the question in my mind. I have to work on my wiki-fu it seems

There has been something bothering me about the manner in which shardblades kill their victims. They do not affect the physical being of living things, but instead, they directly target and kill the soul. Given that shardblades can be considered to be a physical manifestation of spren, it would seem to me that they are cognitive in nature. This would seem to make their logical target the cognitive identity of their victims. Since all three apects: cognitive, physical, and spiritual are needed for life in the cosmere, this would be just as effective a way of killing in my mind. The question that arises, then, is why do they target the spiritual aspect? It could be that once the cognitive is killed, there is nothing holding the soul in place. However, when Szeth is brought back, Nalan seemed to imply that the mind was the last thing to survive, so it doesn't seem that the cognitive was targeted at all. Any thoughts, speculation, WoB on this?

It seems to me that this debate has come down to two different world views on ethics. Specifically the greatest good for the greatest number (Utilitarianism or Pragmatism) vs. moral imperative (right intent and actions regardless of outcome). Philosophically this has been a bone of contention IRL for hundreds if not thousands of years. The fact that Mr. Sanderson has brought this conflict into a genre that tends to only deal with absolutes (pure good vs. pure evil) only deepens my respect for him. Mr. T can be broadly aligned with the RL philosophy of Utilitarianism such as described by Jeremy Bentham or John Stuart Mill: you do whatever you can to minimize harm to the greatest number of people, and if some have to be sacrificed to provide for that, then so be it. Dalinar and the KR can be aligned with philosophies such as the Categorical Imperative as proposed by Immanuel Kant: the morality of an action is determined soley by the intent behind the action, not its end result (journey before destination in the words of the books.) Both are sides of the same coin. They both are guides for ethical action in the face of absent or uncertain absolute morality. The question of which is right comes down to perspective, as does the question of which is more effective in the face of disaster. In this case, we just don't have enough information. It may well be that be that the only way to win the upcoming Desolation is to do what Mr T. is doing: gaining knowledge at the expense of certain individuals, then using this knowledge to fight. The problem is, I can't see what his endgame is. He is removing the world's leadership to place him in a position where he can take over, but I don't see any way that that can happen in the timeframe he is working with. I haven't seen any evidence of his emissaries moving into place to provide the people of these nations a reason to choose him as leader, and he doesn't seem to have an army capable of forcing his will onto so many nations in a few months or even a few years. Its like he thought out the first half of a football game, but has no plans for after half time. It may well be that there is a lot going on that we haven't seen, but we just don't have any evidence for it. Dalinar, on the other hand, has a definite end goal: Restore the KR by forcing the Alethi to unify. His problem is the opposite of Mr T's: he has no definite plan on how to accomplish this beyond some vague ideas about enforcing the codes. He has myriad problems to overcome including cultural, religious, military, etc, and he is purely a military man. While I personally like his character more, it seems to me that he's out of his depth. I doubt we will see a definitive answer to who is more right (or less wrong) anytime soon, but the brilliance of the writing lies in the fact that either may be. Alternatively, neither may be. I'm looking forward to see.

Slightly off topic, but... wrong ruins? What other ruins could she be referring too? Remains of Feverstone Keep, or an obsidion tower in the Purelake possibly? If so that could provide Dalinar the proof he needs that his visions are real. Are we all digging in the wrong place?

I hadn't seen that topic. Sorry to appropriate your theory. Props and an upvote to you!

Here's my theory on this. Apologies in advance for its convoluted nature. 1) Spren normally inhabit the cognitive realm. To my mind they can be considered to be a version of Platonic forms: i.e. the perfect representation of an item or thought. They do not normaly inhabit the physical realm any more that the ideal concept of love, or the ideal concept of a table physically exists. They are abstractions. 2) Something draws spren out of the cognitive realm into the physical, but they seem most drawn to abstract concepts (creativity, glory, honor, etc.) Even the many of the more concrete seeming spren seem to be drawn to things that have cognitive elements. I:E: pain is obviously a physical response, but you can't truly define it without a cognitive idea of what pain is. 3) Whatever the reason that spren are drawn to the physical realm, they seem to be able to be captured and kept there. We have seen a few examples of this: Spren being captured in fabrials comes to mind first, but there are other more subtle examples. In one of the interludes from TWOK, we see two ardents studying flame spren. The moment that one is measured, it becomes fixed (trapped perhaps). This would go also go back to the Platonic ideal: if you somehow build the ideal representation of a table, it no longer inhabits the cognitive realm, but becomes a physical reality. Another example comes from Chapter 3 of WOR: In this case, the form became fixed and permanent when it was physically recorded, possibly trapping the spren in the physical realm, and somehow binding it to Shallan. So what does this all mean in regards to the topic? Lets assume that all KR had a bound spren that allowed them access to their surges. Each of these spren would have been bound to the physical realm in some way. Now, lets say the KR then knowingly and willingly broke their bond. What would happen? We have a clue from Syl who tells Kaladin that she can stop what she is doing to give him surge binding, but that, (paraphrase here) she would lose her sense of self and go back to what she was before-- a mindless windspren. (I apologize for the lack of a direct quote. I'm in the process of moving, and my library is packed in boxes ATM) So what would the lost of cognitive abilities be to a cognitive entity? In a word, death. That could be the betrayal that led to the "death" of so many spren: spren that now are mindless ghosts for lack of a better word that wander the physical realm, with no way back. edited for grammar