BlackYeti

Okay, let's analyse these respective quotes and see what they are saying: In the first quote, the Voidspren seems to be saying: "come with us, I can't decide whether you will be allowed to join, but if you can fight, you'll probably be allowed to join us." In the second quote, the Radiant seems to be saying: "come with us, I can't decide whether you will be allowed to join, but if you can fight, you'll probably be allowed to join us." Your quote is a historical analysis of an event where a Radiant called Kazilah is executed for fraternising with "unwholesome elements". I presume you're thinking that Kaladin is in danger of following in Kazilah's footsteps. However, even if that analysis is correct, I don't see how that it is more similar to the Oathbringer quote than the WoK quote when those two are practically identical to each other. Moreover, if your analysis is right, I don't see how it necessarily invalidates my interpretation.

I've been thinking about this a bit, and I don't think that the bird is an Aviar. I think the idea that only Shallan can see the bird is a little ridiculous, and I think the idea that Mraize would bring something as obvious as a bird, even an Aviar, with him while spying on Ialai to be absurd. No soldier would ever get away with carrying around a bird on their shoulder. I think the most simple explanation for this is actually that the bird belongs, not to Mraize, but to Ialai. She just didn't want to have to look after it herself, so she foisted it onto someone else, and that person happened to be Mraize.

I agree with @The One Who Connects, I wasn't meaning to imply that Kaladin could become a Voidbinder as well as a Surgebinder. Either the Voidspren is, at least partially unaware of his bond to Syl, or she is going to try and break it. Given Syl's reaction to the Voidspren, there is absolutely no way that she would be happy with Kaladin bonding a Voidspren. While the spren may be attracted to the same people initially, I would be very surprised if they did not then lead them down very different paths. I suspect that the only way that we might see "dualbinding", is if a Voidbinder gets their hands on an Honourblade, or there's a Voidbinding equivalent to the Honourblades and the reverse happens. There's a couple of ways that we could approach this from. @Yata has already stated that he think's it's referring to Braize in the Cognitive Realm, and I agree with him, not least because of the fact that Khriss has stated that some of them may be Cognitive Shadows, and every Cognitive Shadow that we have seen has been in the Cognitive Realm. Shadows for Silence spoilers I'm sure that if I don't mention it, someone will bring up that the Heralds and the Returned are technically Cognitive Shadows, the difference there is that they have been given bodies, and most people wouldn't consider them to be spren, (although I suppose that could be another possibility, Cognitive Shadows with bodies). The other approach we could take would be to consider what precisely Khriss meant when she said that the splinters of Braize were self-aware. As is often pointed out on these forums, self-aware and sapient are not synonyms. Sapience is essentially higher intelligence such as is only observed in humans (in our universe). Self-awareness, on the other hand, is simply the ability to recognise that you exist separately from those around you and from the environment itself. Unlike Sapience, this is observed in many animals. I think it's unclear whether or not it could be applied to the lesser spren or not. I've been avoiding bringing up the Stormfather and the Nightwatcher since there's still much we don't understand about the former, and we know virtually nothing about the latter. They do seem to be following different rules to the other spren, but we don't really know enough to theorise on why. As for spren passing through Perpendicularities, I don't think that this is possible since they do not have physical bodies with which to pass through. Mistborn: Secret History spoilers On the point about the Voidspren potentially be fundamentally different: this is true, but that would give us nothing to speculate on. I'm working on the assumption that it functions similarly because it isn't at all helpful to assume otherwise. And your final point is entirely correct, it is indeed far from the only reasonable explanation. I actually avoided presenting this as a theory post, since I didn't think that there was enough evidence behind it and because there were too many branches in the speculation where it could go in different ways. There's actually quite a bit that I disagree with here. On point 1: we don't know why the listeners could not form Nahel bonds in the past, nor why they might be able to do so now (it hasn't been confirmed that they will be able to yet). However, I doubt that Honour was mandating who the spren could or could not bond. For one thing, the Radiant spren are partly of Cultivation as well as of Honour, so why wouldn't she get a say in it if it came down to the Shard's decision? And Cultivation is still around now, so why would she be okay with it now if she wasn't before? Also, in Dalinar's visions, we heard Nohadon say that the honourspren are more discerning than other types of spren in who they bond. This implies that the spren themselves had a choice and that they weren't being told who to bond by the Shards. What is more, if Honour did mandate that the spren never bond listeners, would that mandate really have ended simply because he died? He was able to force the Stormfather to deliver the visions even though he was long gone by that point. On point 2: I think it very unlikely that a spren's Shard being alive allows them to transition to the Physical Realm without losing their sapience. As I mentioned before, the Radiant spren are partly of Cultivation, and she's very much still alive. If we look at the Cryptics for a moment since they are apparently much more of Cultivation than they are of Honour, yet when Shallan restored her bond to Pattern, he came back, in Shallan's own words "Imbecilic". Surely if they were protected by their Shard being alive, he would instead have come back fully developed. On point 3: there are ten Orders of Radiants, that means that there are ten varieties of Radiant spren (or nine if you consider the Bondsmiths bonding their specific spren). There are thousands of varieties of spren altogether, to say that all of these are capable of forming a Nahel bond is absurd. We know that lesser spren existed back during the desolations because in Dalinar's Purelake vision one of the people there mentioned a riverspren. Honour's death increased the number of spren drastically, yes, but there were still lesser spren before his death. We also know that there are lesser spren of Cultivation as well as of Honour, and as I pointed out above, Cultivation hasn't been Splintered, which shouldn't be possible if they only come about by the spren dying. Not all spren are made of the same quantity of Investiture, the lesser spren are those not Invested enough to gain sapience.

I think that's probably this WoB: I don't think this necessarily means what you suggest. At first, from Brandon's response, it seems like he's talking about Shallan's eyes getting lighter, rather than changing colour. He's saying, it's not the case that a person's eyes will get lighter by a set amount/proportion each time they "level up". When the questioner does bring up the colour itself at the end, they bring it up in relation to the Shards, not the Orders, and so Brandon might be interpreting the question differently. It doesn't help that his answer at the end is so hard to parse, I suspect it's a case where it would have made more sense if we had heard him talking, rather than just reading the transcript. Basically, the WoB could be saying that the only thing that becoming a Radiant changes with regard to the eyes is to make them lighter if they are not already light, or it could be saying that the eyes lighten if they are not already light and does not indicate whether they change colour as well. Certainly, the Honourblades, at least, change your eye colour. Szeth's eyes change from dark green to light sapphire when he summons it.

So, I recently posted in the chapters 22-24 reaction thread about Kaladin's conversation with the Voidspren and compared it to the conversation that Dalinar had with the Radiant in his first vision in WoK. After thinking about it some more, I felt that it deserved its own topic. Given the similarity between these two conversations, I suspect that the Voidspren was talking about Kaladin's potential as a Voidbinder, just as the Radiant was talking about "Dalinar's" potential as a Radiant. So, let's use that as our base assumption. Why then, could the spren not offer to bond Kaladin herself. Obviously, the Radiant couldn't make such an offer since he wasn't a spren, but that isn't really an issue here. There are three possibilities that I can think of: The spren was lying, so as to test Kaladin's reactions. The spren is the wrong type of Voidspren and therefore has to leave it to a different spren. The spren is already bonded to someone. I would like to focus on the third possibility here since I think that it's the most interesting, and it would explain something that otherwise doesn't make much sense. How is the spren sapient? Every other sapient spren that we have ever seen has either remained Shadesmar or has been bonded to someone. This even extends to other worlds. (Elantris spoilers) So, how can this spren be sapient? The obvious answer is that she's bonded to someone. In that case, who could she have bonded? There are no obvious candidates, after all. If we assume that the Voidspren bond acts anything like the Nahel bond, then, firstly, given her level of intelligence, she must have been bonded to someone for quite a while at this point (which rules out the listeners). And secondly, that person must be nearby in order for her to retain her sapience. But then how is it that we haven't seen this person? Well, the person in question has to be a Voidbinder, so an obvious possibility is that they are hiding themself by the use of Voidbinding. However, as we basically know nothing of what Voidbinding can do, I'll refrain from speculating on the precise mechanism that they are using to do that. Another possibility is that the Voidspren bond does not work precisely like the Nahel bond. Perhaps the way that the Radiantspren slowly awake to sapience is the result of Cultivation's influence, and in a system in which Cultivation plays no part, the spren instead awaken to full sapience immediately, in which case it could be as simple as one of the listeners being the Voidbinder. Or the Voidbinder actually isn't nearby at all. This possibility is far less helpful for making predictions than the former, unfortunately. In any event, I am intrigued by the fact the spren is interested in Kaladin. What does it say that there is overlap in the groups of people who are suitable to attract a Radiantspren, and people who are suitable to attract a Voidspren? And could it be that we have finally "seen" Voidbinding, as far as it is possible to see that which is hidden, at any rate?

Possession of an Honourblade definitely does not preclude a Nahel-bond, otherwise, Dalinar would have a serious problem right now. However, why would Nale want his Honourblade if he's got a Nahel-bond? He's still following the tenants of the Skybreakers, so if he did, he would have to be bonded to a highspren. What benefit, then, would he get from his Honourblade? If the spren could bond the Heralds, why did they never do so in the past? All of the evidence at this point suggests that Nale has no spren. At this point, there is no issue with assuming the truth of that proposition.

Yes, we are sure that he doesn't have a spren. He was the Herald to went back for his Honourblade. Your quote comes from when Lift is tailing Nale back to his headquarters, it was only after spying on them there that they find out his identity. Wyndle's reaction to that information makes it quite clear that he had no idea who Nale was before that point. Of course, the proto-Skybreakers following Nale would have had a Nahel-bond. The Heralds definitely did not have one however, the spren copied the Honourblades, after all, therefore the Heralds came first.

I've been thinking more about Kaladin's conversation with the Voidspren. Does anyone else think that this sounds suspiciously similar to what that Radiant told Dalinar in his first vision in WoK? Does anyone else think that this could be our first hint of Voidbinding?

Hmm... maybe? The problem with that though, if he still remembers her, would he not still feel pain from her absence, even if he can't remember her death? I get the feeling that there's a whole lot more to Dalinar's memory loss than has been suggested thus far.

Where does it suggest this?

Something that I found interesting: So Dalinar's memories of Evi weren't the only memories that the Nightwatcher took from Dalinar. What else did he forget? Is he also going to start remembering these memories? We still no so little about what's going on here! Why couldn't it have included more information on this?

Well, I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm just considering the viability of the proposed theory. As far as I can tell it's plausible, but I'm not yet fully convinced that the base theory (that it's an Aviar) is correct, let alone this variation. Thus, I'm not saying that it has to be this, I'm just considering all of the options.

That was my point.

Edit: more ninjas than you realise @Pagerunner

No, @What's a Seawolf? is correct.

Only everyone who's ever read Words of Radiance.

I don't agree with this. There is basically no comparison between the actions of Lin Davar, and those of Adolin. They may both have killed in rage, but the context for them is completely different and, of course, context is king (sorry Elhokar ). When Lin killed, whether it be Malise or anyone else, there was no reason behind it: it was completely unjustifiable. It was the product of a sick man who was seemingly coming to feel nothing but the aforementioned rage. Adolin's situation, however, was completely different, for reasons that should be completely obvious at first glance. Sadeas was a mass murderer, one who had tried to have him and his father, along with most of their army, killed, all while wearing the mask of friendship. He then later sent an assassin after them, one who, for a time at least, seemed to have successfully killed Shallan and Kaladin (and did succeed in killing other members of their group). Sadeas has been proven wrong, but he's not going to stop despite that. He's now threatened to continue with his prior actions, and we know that he's not bluffing. He therefore represents a severe and grave threat to both Adolin and everyone that Adolin cares about, which, by extension, threatens the very world itself. And there exists no ligitimate way for Adolin, or anyone else, to deal with that threat. So yes, Adolin is filled with rage at this point, as anyone would be, as anyone should be. This rage is the opposite of Lin Davar's rage: it is entirely justified, and the correct response to the situation. Rage is not an inherently bad thing, after all. So, I don't think it's likely that Shallan will see it in the same terms as her father's murders, especially given that she's undergone Jasnah's training in philosophy. She's to clever (although she often tries not to be) to not realise that two entirely different situations, are in fact, different. With her father, she was in an intolerable situation, with Adolin she is not.

If it carries on down this trajectory, then book 4 will end up being called "An Accountability of Virtue" (the love story which that Ardent was reading in that earlier released Interlude).

I highly doubt that Brandon would deceive us like you're suggesting. I suspect that the epigraphs are highly significant, we just lack the context to understand the significance at this point. And you're right about the epigraphs not sounding like something that Jasnah would have written. I don't know if you've read the Mistborn trilogy, but the epigraphs in those books contain a warning against ignoring that sort of clue to the writer's identity: they often aren't who you first think they are.

Allow me to quote myself here: Additionally @maxal has pointed out that in order to become Highprince, you only need to be able to convince other people to call you Highprince. As such it wouldn't be that much of a stretch for Ialai to become Highprince. I think this is very likely actually. I don't think that Mraize is actually that highly ranked in the Ghostbloods. We know that Iyatil is above him, and Thaidakar is somewhere above that. I think he's actually somewhere more in the middle of the hierarchy, and the situation is a bit like in Mistborn Era 2 where I also agree with you that Ialai's a very interesting villain, and I do want to see her stick around for a few books (unlike her husband, whom I'm very glad is dead as I did not find him at all interesting). She seems to me to be far more cunning than Torol Sadeas, so I would be very surprised if she didn't turn out to be a greater foe.

Not to mention that Ialai apparently has a veritable army of assassins at her command. I could easily imagine a number of potential contenders suddenly suffering from a plague of inexplicable and fatal, accidents and illnesses.

What's your issue with Moash having saved Kaladin's life? It's clear that, at the very least, he most likely did so in WoK - Chapter 53 when he pulled Kaladin away from the advancing army. Had he not done so, it's unlikely that Kaladin would have avoided being trampled. Certainly, Kaladin thinks that Moash saved his life and that death rattle appears to have been written from his perspective. And every other part of that epigraph fits perfectly with the events of that assassination attempt, lending further support to that interpretation.