Ari

Do not get me started on why this and are a problem, lol. I really wish Brandon had went for Hey, just some clean up to back up your point: Reference for hemalurgy working on planets other than Scadrial: https://wob.coppermind.net/events/90-barnes-noble-b-fest-2016/#e5551 https://wob.coppermind.net/events/113-utah-humanities-book-festival/#e2622 Reference (and rough timeframe) for people born on other planets already having used hemalurgy: https://wob.coppermind.net/events/224-words-of-radiance-san-francisco-signing/#e6877 And so I'm not making a huge quote-post, I'll just @KidWayne for the next bit regarding his possibilities: I'm not convinced yet that (B) is necessarily what we're seeing in that spoiler-text you talk about. Remember, the person involved is likely simply showing a visualization of what is happening, and even if they're not, we have learned in Oathbringer and from WoB that red-coloured magic doesn't necessarily simply represent Odium, but rather a corruption/repurposing of another Shard's power.

If you're not sure, talk it over with another creative person. (They don't have to be a writer! They just need to understand the creative process. A musician, filmmaker, actor, dancer, puppeteer, etc... will all work as well as a writer- that said, you probably want someone who works with fiction, so a journalist, blogger, etc... won't be helpful) Adding extra perspectives to your process before you're sure about what you want to do is great. If you can't consult with someone else, ideally have some sort of central message or theme involved in each of your works. If you're deciding between lots of different ideas, pick the one that you feel you feel adds the most to your work- either by reinforcing your message or theme, or complicating it. (so for instance, if your message is that "democratic process makes decision-making better," showing the bad parts of how demacracy works is actually a plus for selling your theme as long as you don't over-emphasize them, because you're being sure to give a balanced picture) If you feel the options are equal trade-offs in that respect, there should normally be one that adds some other aspect to your work which synergises better with the whole thing. And as Eagle says, making a decision and writing is better than getting stuck on these choices, so flip a coin if it's taking you more than a couple of days to decide. It's better to decide randomly and fail than to never start, and the lessons you learn writing something that isn't perfect are so much more valuable than the lessons you learn by avoiding mistakes altogether that it's almost worth deciding things randomly for your first couple of goes just to see what doesn't work for you, because you're definitely going to make mistakes in your first couple works, no matter WHAT you do.

Hoid's real goal: collect every iteration of Lightweaving in the cosmere.

So after WoR I had a pet theory that Moelach or one of the other Unmade had managed to influence Taravangian in his creation of the diagram to push him towards Odium by feeding him some of his key insights which seemed at the time to be possibly based on prescience rather than scholarship. (as we find out in OB, however, things like the movement of the Unmade have been rigorously studied. Whoops) Unless Odium is feigning surprised delight at the Diagram, I guess that particular part of my theory is out the window, even if Taravangian ending up working for Odium is still in play. I had thought it would be cooler if he started out an unwitting pawn that thought he was too smart for Odium, rather than simply trying to get an upper hand in negotiations, and then eventually got turned into a knowing collaborator due to his unsavory methods. Part of my assumption here was also that he wouldn't be able to have any collaborating Radiants in his group, which is clearly not the case! Look forward to learning more about Ashspren in future books, but I suppose this way there's much more potential for further treachery.

Sure, that's reasonable, as we eventually see with Aesudan, Venli, Moash, Amaram, and Taravangian, it's likely to be much more complicated than just Humans vs Parshendi. Although Odium is very good at seeing the general shape of events, so he should be able to at least make a very convincing pitch that the best way to get the Parshendi their planet back is to side with him, so Raysium knife to corrupt an unwilling Herald when you can simply try and talk a different one around is going a little overboard.

Yep, I'm going with "killed with a Raysium knife to suck his ghost into a gem" as Jezrien's cause of disappearance. (we won't say death because can heralds even "die" as such, at least beyond the "for certain values of dead" caveat? Guess we'll RAFO.) I don't know that the idea is necessarily to get a corrupted herald though, although that certainly would break the Oathpact as they could simply have their corrupted Herald do an end-run around the gap between desolations, I'm not actually sure it's that easy, as it may not even be possible to cleanly confer the spritual identity of a sworn part of the Oathpact that way. I think Odium's going for the opposite of Jasnah's strategy: she wanted to assassinate the heralds to end the desolation, Odium wants to trap them all to prevent it ending. Besides, Nale is going to side with the Parshendi. You presumably wouldn't need to corrupt a herald if you've got a volunteer.

I had recalled a WoB about the magic on ashyn being innate investiture, but I can't find it anymore so it's possibly I'm just misremembering it, (I've been away for a while and WoBs get rusty in your memory fast) or just that it did exist but it was something he said on Writing Excuses or something and nobody transcribed it. Also, in terms of where they actually came from- I don't know, you could get a relatively small group of people coming through the cognitive realm, if it's been enough generations since then for them to grow in population exponentially.

Plus it would be an amusing tension with her being Queen now, and being expected to have additional heirs even if Elhokar's kid is currently set to inherit.

IMO Jasnah should be single for at least the first half if not the entire series. I actually quite like the idea of her having purely rational reasons to simply want to be single, regardless of whether the initial impulse came from trauma or not.

Isn't Ashyn where Silence Divine happens? IF the suggestions in OB are literally correct that Odium care with the human immigrants, (which may not be the case) then Ashyn is a terrible candidate because he likely would have surpressed the innate investiture there from developing.

Any particular reason?

I was thinking in terms of depositing mass amounts of investiture rather than just large storms, but that would probably put paid to greatshells on further reflection so you're probably right that highstorms would have had to be pre-existing regardess. Cheers.

Oh, that's a fair cop, because looking over that WoB he actually straight out starts with the "people did not" bit. Arguably there's room for "people migrated from yolen to x, x to roshar" quibbling I suppose, but I don't know that Brandon would be pulling that one either.

I'd be careful with that WoB. He says "people," not "humans," and he has previously used the word "people" to refer to non-human sentient beings. This could be Brandon being tricky and pointing out red herrings to avoid spoiling his surprise, by saying something that is technically correct because Parshendi are people.

Pretty sure the Tranquilline Halls may be a sort of idealized version of wherever humans came from before they immigrated to Roshar, rather than an actual place that has anything to do with Honour or Cultivation. It's probably one of those Things Vorinism Got Wrong. I'm not even necessarily sold on highstorms being pre-existing, either. There could have been some wind- or storm-based magic that wasn't exactly like highstorms, but modern highstorms are just Honour's investiture running wild, the same way the everstorms are a Rosharan manifestation of Odium's power. And yeah, OB sorta implies that the humans brought Odium with them, but that could also imply that Humans came first and then Odium followed either because of them, or not because of them but the Listeners blamed them for his arrival anyway, rather than a contemporaneous arrival. There's also the mystery of how Odium would have ended up trapped on Braize if he had arrived at the same time as the human refugees, as he would presumably then have followed them directly to Roshar, wheras him arriving later makes a bit more sense of him choosing to keep his distance a bit more.

Humans being invaders causing the Recreance does make sense if their initiation into the Knights Radiant was based on them thinking of themselves as honourable defenders of their homes, and it turns out that actually those homes were stolen, then you can see how that revelation would lead to them not feeling they could reasonable continue on as keepers of their oaths without reassurance from someone who understands them that this didn't undermine the whole foundation of their being. I thought it was well explained, even if I didn't particularly like it as an explanation myself. (it didn't feel foreshadowed enough to me, it was TOO surprising, and I was reading a bit much into Shallan's issues and hoping for the explanation to be something like the nahel bond potentially driving them even crazier, but I probably would have gotten over that with a tiny bit of foreshadowing being dropped by Azure/Vivenna)

There's a possibility that what that means is that humans had visited Roshar pre-shattering, but hadn't emigrated. Hell, it's possible that Rosharan humans are from Yolen, and emigrated because the Shattering made their world uninhabitable, or because whatever happened pre-shattering did it, and the Shattering was some desperate last-ditch attempt to stop the problem that didn't work. (but that seems less likely given that Sazed managed to rectify things on Scadrial pretty well)

It's possible that this is also just another aspect of Odium, like the capacity for change is an aspect of Ruin and the drawback of stagnation is an aspect of Preservation- Odium is his "downside," if you will, but passion is his upside. I do like the idea of the Sibling being the spren of Urithiru, though. That's a good explanation for why three bondsmiths when they can't possibly touch Odium for any of their powers.

I'd just chalk that up to Hoid speaking poetically for now, but YMMV.

Ah, I must have skipped by that part in my excitement. Yeah, I would expect it would have been noteworthy if any prior Parshendi cognitive shadows (ghosts, basically) managed to repurpose themselves into radiantspren, and we would have got that in the big Stormfather Infodump in Part 2, but I figured that was the most likely hack that would have allowed Timbre to bond with Venli. I guess not though!

Cognitive Shadows are Spren, Steeldancer, or Dalinar couldn't have bonded the Stormfather. That's a possibility if the "cometspren" is simply the physical manifestation of a lightspren, and it's the same one we saw in WoR. I had assumed that was one of the Parshendi generals trying to Fuse with Eshonai before she died. It would certainly be suspicious for Eshonai to manifest in a way different to the way her ancestors do, especially as it's implied that Odium had something to do with them managing not to let go in the first place, and Eshonai opposed him pretty fiercely.

I wouldn't entirely rule out Cultivation, as it's possible she didn't start off on the same world as Honour, but I agree if it's a known shard it was probably Endowment. Also worth noting is that Uli Da is probably a new vessel name. This probably refers to Ambition, as the unknown vessel in Letter #1 is glad to be rid of her. Bavadin being Letter #2- possibly. I would certainly say it's likely to be whoever Trell is, given the reference to many worlds, although the references to water would be a negative for Bavadin unless she's branched out from just Taldain. Also - we should remember Obrodai as a possible Shardworld. Definitely agree that it's obvious #3 is from Sazed, that's what clued me on to them being separate letters. Brandon's usually much clearer about that sort of thing, although I suppose he'd have to have had a more obvious signoff to each letter to differentiate them somehow to be clearer here, and I can understand him wanting to be circumspect about the identity of these vessels. As nobody's linked it yet, btw: https://coppermind.net/wiki/Oathbringer/Epigraphs If anyone's asking just a single question about these, btw, I'd suggest "are all the letters from various Shards in Part 2 of Oathbringer from shards we had already seen?" Because if those guesses are right, the answer should be yes.

That's definitely what Brandon said about WoK prime. I think he just wanted to preserve the mystery a bit to confirm it for Book 3 and also so he could shut down questions about the heralds for longer by not even being able to talk about the only one who'd been "exposed" to the other main characters.

So, there's a cometspren in Oathbringer that Venli nicknames Timbre, and there's some interesting things going on if you've read the whole book. I have a bit of a theory that will either be controversial or a completely obvious realisation that Timbre the cometspren (see I-3, I-11 for Timbre's introduction) is the remnant of Eshonai's mind, and that's why it was hanging around Venli, trying to redeem her and trap her Odiumspren? Timbre first appears from under Eshonai's corpse, and just a few chapters later in chapter 38, we get the full explanation that many Parshendi had left cognitive shadows behind on their death, it seems like a pretty reasonable assumption that the cometspren is simply what a Parshendi cognitive shadow manifests as in the physical realm in Roshar. Any thoughts?

As to the powers of the Fused coming from the Unmade, I disagree. I thought that Part 2 made pretty clear that the Fused's powers come from Parshendi spirits having, for lack of a better word, marinaded in Odium's essence, taking on some of his magic through the damage caused to their personalities by the (sometimes repeated) death of their bodies, and that the forms of power seem to let them access at least one surge at a time. (I suspect they can only access one) A little cleanup on Renarin, too. I would also note very carefully in the second scene of Chapter 122 where Odium talks to Taravangian that Renarin's name on the Diagram is hidden from Odium's vision. This is likely due to a similar effect to Ruin's blindness to metal. edit: here's the exact quote: I'm not 100% convinced that Glys is a corrupted spren. That might be true, and seems like the most obvious reading of the text, and that Ivory's comments ("a traitor is", iirc?) may simply refer to corruption of a Lightspren by Sja-anat, but it could also be that Glys is some other type of spren typically associated with Odium that has switched sides. (I think we can safely assume they're not talking about Sja-anat herself with that comment given the context of Jasnah running off to find Renarin) Whichever exact interpretation is correct, I also find it very likely that Renarin has no access to Lightweaving at all, and that his visions of the future are probably a manifestation of a different Surge that's replaced lightweaving. We'll have to wait and see if any other Lightspren choose humans to have a point of comparison.