Seloun

I'll certainly concede that the Nale may have 'learned' (or was told a clever lie) that Surgebinding brings about the Desolations after the breaking of the Oathpact. However, that was sort of my point - it's difficult to understand the Prelude of TWoK if the theory holds and the Heralds were aware of how things worked before the breaking of the Oathpact. The problem is that there are mutually contradictory pieces of evidence being used to support the argument. If Nale/Heralds learns of it afterwards, then the Heralds leaving the Honorblades isn't really evidence (they would have no reason to think that less Surgebinding = less Desolations, so they obviously would not have used that as the reason to leave their Honorblades) which weakens the original argument pretty significantly. If Nale/Heralds learned of it before, then there has to be an explanation why they left the KR alone (or did not warn them, or whatever) since no matter how inefficient their Surgebinding may have been, surely dozens or hundreds of KR Surgebinding is going to involve a lot more Stormlight usage. I'm inclined to say for now that the person who likely knows best about how the Desolations work is Tanavast. Of course, he has a small problem of being dead. However, we know that his visions appear to say that the KR are necessary to deal with Odium (though it's worth noting that this does not preclude that the KR hasten Desolations; his reasoning might be that it's inevitable Odium gets free whether early or late). He also talks about the Dawnshards, which we know nothing about, which in turn leads me to think there's just not enough information to come to the correct conclusion. That in turn implies to me that theories which don't require a known unknown regarding Odium's binding are likely to be suspect (this is of course meta-reasoning and subject to the usual pitfalls). I'll mention that I believe there's a non-trivial chance that Tanavast's visions are actually suspect (we know that the visions are certainly not a literal depiction of what occurred, since the characters react to Dalinar's actions). The argument from the visions is independent of my initial objection, though. My final point would be that we know (or have good reason to assume) that the return of the Heralds <=> Desolation (i.e. Desolation implies the Heralds are back, and Heralds returning implies a Desolation) based on WoBs. This means it's possible that the causal connection might not be that the KR Surgebinding results in the Desolation, but that KR Surgebinding causes the Heralds to return (maybe it makes their suffering worse). This would still fit with Nale's behavior, but would not suggest that Surgebinding per se directly affected the rate of Desolations (and most relevant to the OP, would not be related the Herald's Surgebinding).

I can't imagine that this is the full explanation since it doesn't really make sense why the Heralds would have to go somewhere to be tortured between Desolations. If it's really just a matter of not using surges, it's unclear why they can't just do the same solution of putting their Honorblades elsewhere. Also, it makes no sense to let other Surgebinders run around willy-nilly if they're aware of this issue from the beginning. There's no particular evidence that the Heralds persecuted Nahel bond wielders before the 'Last Desolation' (besides the KR formation, but that's not so much persecution as providing structure). It seems like whatever caused Nale to start hunting Surgebinders has to be a development since the he abandons the Oathpact.

Alternatively, the small flames really are gateways between the Cognitive and the Physical. Sentience might be described as a transference of information from the Physical to the Cognitive, so humans or sentients appear to be energy radiators in the Cognitive. This doesn't fully explain what the small flame Jasnah pushes Shallan into, however (unless it's a naturally occurring one - which seems like a heck of a coincidence - or perhaps physically shifting into the Cognitive 'tears' a gate). I'm not really sure I agree with this theory, more of a devil's advocate/alternative hypothesis to explore.

The thing is that the only real 'evidence' of an inversion between lighteyes and darkeyes is the fact the Feverstone Keep commander was darkeyed (and that Dalinar is surprised by that). However Dalinar's description of the troops stationed at the fort indicate that these are reserve, low-quality troops; the real warriors are, unsurprisingly, the Knight themselves, who are certainly lighteyed. Note that the reason why in 'modern' times lighteyes are held in high esteem is almost certainly a carryover from Surgebinders/Radiants having light eyes. It seems far more likely that there was no 'inversion'; instead, lighteyes have always had a privileged position (well, shortly after the Nahel bond was discovered, at any rate). The only difference is why lighteyes were looked up to (early on it's because they're hugely powerful, later because of the KR, then finally due to social inertia/Vorin church). In particular, it's probably not the eyes that actually mattered initially (it's just correlation to being a Surgebinder, so a non-Surgebinder with light eyes probably had no special rank pre-Recreance). I don't think there's really any data to support a role inversion between lighteyes and darkeyes (or more accurately, I don't think there's any evidence of a period of time where one's rank was determined by eye color such that dark eyes were higher rank than light eyes).

Actually, lighteyes ranks are dahn while darkeyes ranks are nahn, with the tenth dahn outranking all nahn ranks: As far as i know there's no explicit case of darkeyed children 'losing' nahn ranks. Lirin implies the opposite, really: As far as I know there's no reason to expect that Tien was anything besides second nahn, though it's possible that e.g. it's a title only passed to the inheritor, likely the eldest, and this is why Shallan is a rank below her father (while his heir may be the same rank).

Been discussed before - my theory is that it's related to bond-farming by spren. We know that the spren really seem to like being bonded to humans. We also know that in order to have the bond form (or form fully; this is still confusing) the individual has to be 'cracked' in some fashion; for the current protagonists this generally requires some major mental trauma that ends up shaping much of their personality or motivation. Given that the spren seem to like being bonded with humans, one might ask what they get out of it. There has been speculation that spren might somehow be part of the lifecycle of the greatshells (we know the greatshells are intimately involved with some forms of spren) or more to the point, perhaps vice versa. What if the spren lifecycle somehow depends on bonding with creatures in the physical realm, with the creature depending on the type of spren? So there's a population of spren, comprised of a lot more members that want to be bonded than are bonded, and are spren specifically associated with humans - so can't bond with anyone besides humans. But unlike Rosharian races, humans can't form bonds natively - they need some help. The next logical step might be to do something to encourage bonds to form. Then the humans get all angry about how the spren are 'abusing' them, and next you know all of the spren are dead. So obviously, highly speculative, but fits what we know about the mechanics of the Nahel bond (needing a broken person), what we've observed in the books (the human-associated spren seem to _like_ or want to be bonded to humans, and are implied to require having restrictions not to do so), and is potentially horrific enough to make 200 or so Kaladin-analogues break their oaths in a fashion that explicitly kills their spren. The latter is a non-trivial thing; the spren must have been responsible for some perceived crime since otherwise there presumably would have been other ways to deal with the problem (e.g. everyone retires, kills themselves in a manner that doesn't kill the spren, take a long journey across the ocean, fly to the moon, whatever). The most obvious candidate for such a crime that the spren might consider given how much they seem to like being bonded with humans is doing something to be more bondy with humans. As a thought experiment, suppose Syl was somehow responsible (indirectly) for Tien's death. If Kaladin believe that to be the case, and moreover if it turns out all (or even some) of the KR spren are somehow responsible for their bondmate's 'break', I think you could see why Kaladin might take drastic action. However, if what the spren/Honor believes is true and the KR are absolutely necessary for the survival of mankind on Roshar...well, tough call (Mr. T would pity the fools).

The main issue is that you're giving one of the spanreeds a privileged frame of reference. In particular you are assuming that one of the spanreeds somehow assumes the same momentum as the other spanreed, but there's no reason to expect one of the spanreeds is distinguishable from the other. So what must be occurring is that momentum is being shared between the spanreeds. Initially this probably isn't a problem (the straight-line distance from the spanreeds remain constant despite the earth's rotation) as long as the connection is somehow compliant against rotation. That said, the main problem is that of orientation, which breaks conservation of momentum all to heck without considering anything else (alternatively, the spanreeds would behave very strangely, essentially as a gyroscope; trying to move it e.g. left would cause it to generally try to drift in another direction as well, as the other spanreed tries to translate the change in linear momentum from its frame of reference).

It's a neat theory, and I re-read the passage looking for any shadow weirdness (I didn't notice any). The main problem with the explanation is that she soulcasts two targets at the same time, who are on opposite sides of her; this leads me to think it's not really a matter of using her spren for that function. Shallan also describes bolts of stormlight that streak from Jasnah to the targets, which presumably wouldn't have been necessary if Ivory was the delivery mechanis,.

I'd offer two, relatively prosaic, reasons for this - First, the context of her questioning: singing is something that requires no other accompaniment and can be done quickly (Jasnah is in a hurry, they're standing/walking around on another errand). Jasnah doesn't ask Shallan to play an instrument either (though to be fair Shallan does state that her voice is better than her skill with instruments). Visual arts can't be done without some implement and (for pretty much anyone except Shallan) pretty time consuming. While this can be addressed for drawings and paintings by bringing a portfolio, I don't think Jasnah felt that she would have changed her mind regardless how well Shallan's artistic skill was given her previous answers (this is pretty common in interviewing after all - if they're already gone after the first couple of interviewers it's common to just scrap the rest of the interview). Second, Jasnah isn't particularly good at drawing. As Dalinar notes: and I'm pretty sure Jasnah tried drawing, found her talent lacking in the area, and basically abandoned study of it since she couldn't become near-perfect at it. It's a little petty, but even Jasnah's not quite perfect. It's quite possible that she doesn't really feel qualified to judge artistic merit if she hasn't studied art in a scholarly manner. It seems pretty clear that she's impressed by Shallan's skill at art and is more than willing to take advantage of it (e.g. the above scene where Jasnah has Shallan reproduce the picture for Dalinar) but she's probably much weaker in that area than e.g. history (unsurprisingly) or less obviously, music. This might have a corollary (given what Jasnah asks Shallan about first) in that Jasnah might actually be a really good singer or musician.

I'm not sure Pattern being the focus for an illusion is really the big thing here (for example, Shallan 'throws' an image of Kaladin near him without needing to use Pattern); she really does infuse Pattern in the sense that she divides her Stormlight and puts some into Pattern: Essentially Pattern works like a Stormlight reservoir. The big deal here seems to be less that Pattern is attached to the illusion, but that Pattern can _power_ the illusion without drawing Shallan's Stormlight. Pattern's capability of holding Stormlight is also described as being inferior to Shallan's. This does not seem like a throwaway line considering that this distinction is also one of the big difference between an Honorblade and the Nahel bond: It's almost like spren are half of the stormlight affinity while Surgebinding is the other half (making Nahel bond wielders more efficient than Honorblade wielders or spren) - or being human is half and being spren is the other half. Potential applications of this might be to 'hide' Stormlight or just have an extra buffer of Stormlight that doesn't require gemstones. She can likely maintain lashings much like how Pattern can maintain illusions. We don't have any direct evidence that the spren can Surgebind (while Syl does bind things as a trick, it's implied in TWoK that this is also a common windspren trait, and there's no indication that Syl is actually spending Stormlight for her tricks in the same way Surgebinding works) but she could likely at least e.g. keep Kaladin's personal lashings if he runs out of Stormlight at an inopportune time. This function may also be somehow related to what happens when Kaladin falls into the chasm (though WoB doesn't really seem to go in this direction).

While true, Kaladin makes the following observation near the end of WoR:

We never see Shardblades 'wield themselves.' Any motion we see from them in the physical world (with the possible exception of the morphing, though this can be explained as a unsummon-resummon behavior) is due to other physical agencies; when someone lets go of a Shardblade, it falls due to gravity. They are affected by friction (otherwise the last clap would not work) and seems to behave pretty much like any other physical object, except being very sharp and 'fuzzing' when cutting living matter. My point is that there's no reason that we've seen to expect that Syl can somehow make her physical form move without following physical laws. If she had control surfaces she might be able to maneuver despite this restriction. But I don't think there's any evidence to think that she can just move her physical form arbitrarily. Just because she can do it as a spren doesn't indicate that she can do it while assuming a form in the physical realm. So I don't think she could be thrown around a corner unless there was a physical reason that would work, i.e. Shardboomerang or some other throwable airfoil, and she couldn't 'adjust' after being thrown. Note that if she could do this, this would make the Radiant basically moot, since Syl could simply be a dancing Shardblade that doesn't need a wielder at all (no need to consider anything beyond a self-wielded Shardblade, really). Consider the chasm scene - if Pattern could simply fly around as a Shardblade, the scene is trivialized. Basically, my interpretation is that the KR essentially functions as a 'gate' for the spren to enter the physical realm in physical form, but once they've crossed over, they're bound by physical rules (Pattern cannot 'slide' underneath surfaces, Syl can't ignore gravity).

Syl's Shardblade/spear/whatever form is presumably still affected by physics, and as hypothesized above, Syl probably can't manifest except through contact with Kaladin. A shardspear generally isn't going to have control surfaces or a reaction thruster, so it can't just change direction mid-flight for no reaason. Kaladin has to touch to lash objects (even if he could lash Sylspear) so that doesn't resolve the issue of mid-flight guidance (lashing in of itself should also be a really bad way to make sudden course corrections). I don't believe we've seen a Shardblade change shape while not held by the bondmate (otherwise we could have ailerons on the spear). Regardless though, if the Shardspear is affected by physics, it can't just ignore inertia and turn on a dime without something providing the exchange of momentum. It's worth noting that so far the most dangerous trick used by Windrunners is probably the 'multiple lashing a heavy object' trick. Szeth kills two Shardbearers basically in a single shot that way, while Kaladin is able to propel himself with enough strength to crack Shardplate.

The fact that Kaladin killed Helaran is unlikely to be an issue in of itself. When Shallan thinks about the situation believing Amaram was the killer, her reaction is surprisingly ambivalent: Yes, she's angry at her brother's killer, but she also immediately rationalizes reasons for why Helaran's death might be justified. It's pretty clear that Shallan feels somewhat abandoned by her brother, too. If Kaladin has an opportunity to explain the circumstances of Helaran's death, I just don't think it would be something she's hold against him. What will probably be an issue however is that Shallan will likely learn about Kaladin's involvement in Helaran's death in a way that makes it looks like Kaladin was deliberately misleading her. Note that Shallan has multiple opportunities where she could have plausibly have found about Kaladin being Helaran's killer during WoR (arena, chasm, and Dalinar's trick on Amaram - in each case she is present or in the case of the last, literally riding by as it occurs). Now Kaladin is leaving Urithiru and likely out of communication (or of limited communication) for a while; this seems pretty clearly a set up to generate misunderstanding about the circumstances of Helaran's death. That Shallan will find out shortly after Kaladin leaves is practically a given - it's almost a miracle that she doesn't know about it already. What all this setup indicates is that there are plans for some kind of deep relationship between Shallan and Kaladin (not necessarily romantic); this is because without that sort of relationship, this sort of drama doesn't have much of an impact. Look at Shallan's reaction to Amaram, who she has no particular feelings for one way or another outside of being presumed killer of Helaran - her anger towards him is almost rote, with the comment at the end ('Though Amaram was still a bastard, of course') almost sounds like a perfunctory punch clock reaction more than legitimate distress. It's a lot of work setting up this plot line to not have a much stronger pay off. I don't really agree with this assessment. While we don't really see Kaladin do much 'on screen' regarding abstract thinking, it's pretty clear that he's being set up to have such talents (e.g. Shallan's shilling about Kaladin immediately before and during the chasm scene). Kaladin certainly isn't currently as knowledgeable as Jasnah or even Shallan, but that's mostly due to the Vorin culture and his circumstances; note that Shallan had a similar problem in TWoK (at least by Jasnah's estimation) but ultimately temperament and passion carry the day. It's also unclear that Jasnah is necessarily looking for someone who is a mirror of her. She has a great deal of respect for both Dalinar and (her view of) Taravangian, neither of whom are supposed to be scholars or thought to be particularly brilliant, because they are good people by her estimation. It's unlikely that Jasnah would have a negative view of Kaladin given that he's clearly intelligent and highly moral. That said, I think Jasnah's relationship with Kaladin would be much like her relationship with Shallan - more of a mentor-pupil relationship than romantic. Many of the qualities that Jasnah appreciates in Shallan are possessed by Kaladin as well. It'd also be interesting (and likely rather useful for Kaladin) to see Jasnah discuss/mentor Kaladin about morality; given the nature of Kaladin's powers, he has a very practical reason to be concerned about morality and ethics.

It's unlikely that it was Pattern that causes Relis to hesitate, since by then Syl has chased him off. Syl sees Pattern early on during the fight, Pattern runs while Syl chases, but Syl has to come back to Kaladin when he's dodging the two Shardbearers. Syl wanders off: Syl comes back: Kaladin intervenes with Relis almost immediately thereafter. Syl is still with Kaladin after Relis runs away, so if Pattern was around Syl likely would have noticed or chased further since Kaladin didn't need her any more: Later, Syl recaps: That said, I don't really think that the hesitation was time related, since we have no indication that Relis's attack on Kaladin is slowed at all. All Relis appears to do is turn in place, so if he was somehow being slowed, it seems reasonable that it would still be in effect when Relis takes a swipe at Kaladin at the end. Relis is certainly thinking fast enough to decide that he's going to swing at Kaladin; none of this suggests time manipulation being a factor here. My interpretation was somewhat more prosaic - Relis was using Kaladin's desire to protect Renarin to give himself an edge. Relis definitely treats Kaladin as a threat by this point. Kaladin uses the surge-dropkick to break his armor, as well as stabbing him through his broken vambrace, resulting in: I don't think Relis thinks that he can beat Kaladin straight-up by the end of the fight: Adolin is out of commission (he's stuck in unpowered Shardplate under Jakamav) so it's just Relis and Kaladin. Relis evaluates the situation and specifically avoids dueling Kaladin. Kaladin is not far behind when Relis reaches Renarin. If Relis kills Renarin, Kaladin might get to him right as he's out of position swinging at Renarin, and Relis is still stuck duelling Kaladin regardless. Instead, Relis chooses to threaten Renarin so Kaladin might be less concerned about protecting himself for that moment. It's worth noting that Relis's attack is actually very close to being successful due to Kaladin's haste in getting to Renarin, and if not for the screaming spren issue (and it's hard to fault Relis for not accounting for _that_), Relis would have still been in a good position, with Kaladin on the ground and open to a follow-up strike (or even just pushing the Shardblade harder; I'd imagine leverage would favor Relis once he got over the 'light swinging' that Zahel notes some Shardbearers tend to do with Sharblades).

Given how Kaladin describes and directly compares Shallan (post-Chasm) with Tien, I figure Tien was a proto-Lightweaver. Tien's creativity appears to express itself through sculpture rather and drawing like Shallan (e.g. the wooden horse figurine). I don't think Tien specifically sees faces in rocks (Kaladin is the one that actually describes internally that the rock looks like a smiling face); rather, he's good at seeing patterns in rocks and is essentially able to express his feelings by finding the appropriate rock. Sort of like sculpting, except finding the rock that looks right rather than making a rock look right. Note also that Kaladin sees the smiling face, and it makes him smile too; this seems very similar to how Shallan 'changes' people with her drawings. Tien's interest in rocks is also similar to Shallan's interest in natural sciences; her obsession is flora and fauna while Tien's is geological. They have pretty similar artistic temperament and have a similar ability to cheer people up (well, at least Kaladin specifically). Proto-Lightweaver seems like a safe bet. Assuming this is the case, there would be an interesting parallel between the relationship between Shallan and Helaran versus Tien and Kaladin (another mirrored symmetry between the two). It'll be interesting to see if Kaladin ends up being a sort-of replacement for Helaran for Shallan (how that associates with the Shalladin ship is an exercise perhaps better left unexamined for now) or if we see her comparing Helaran with Kaladin. It would also potentially be another example of surgebinding proclivity having a strong genetic component (if Shallan, Helaran, Tien, Kaladin, Dalinar and Renarin all are/potentially were surgebinders, we'd have three examples of surgebinding apparently running in families).

The problem here is that Adolin has no access to stormlight during the Sadeas scene. In particular, both Sadeas and Adolin are forced specifically to use lanterns as their source of light since stormlight is in such demand to operate the Oathgate. It's also dark, which means if Adolin had somehow invested stormlight it should have been clearly visible: Those appear to the only sources of light in the scene; Adolin also leaves his lantern behind, so it's actually only Sadeas's lantern that's providing illumination. So the wording is almost certainly just coincidence.

Something often ignored in discussions about morality is that in practice decisions are made with incomplete information. It's important to consider how that may impact the decision-making of the individuals in question. It's worth noting that Kaladin/Syl's morality is generally reactive rather than proactive; that is, they are generally about identifying something 'wrong' and acting to prevent it, rather than actively trying to change things that aren't yet obviously broken. This is actually a pretty good rule, if somewhat conservative - if you think you can afford to wait to have more information before acting, that's usually the best choice. A rational decision would be based on the expected value of additional information versus the expected value of the opportunity cost of deferring a decision. In situations where someone is under direct attack or in immediate risk of dying, the expected value from the lost opportunity would be determined by most people to be pretty high. Nalan is different in that he appears to be more proactive about his decision making. He has decided that killing Surgebinders will stop the Desolations (he seems to believe that's a good thing) and is actively going about to accomplish his goal. As mentioned by other people, Nalan doesn't appear to be using the law for morality (i.e. there is no law that says he should stop the Desolation, or that he should kill Surgebinders) but instead as something that limits the actions he's allowed to take (in other words, following the law absolutely is part of his morality, but it does not drive it). In particular Nalan seems pretty sure about his belief about the interaction between Surgebinders and the Desolations; this appears to be the main flaw in his decision making - incorrect assessment about the accuracy of that correlation/causation. Edgedancer philosophy sounds pretty close to the Windrunners, except probably more proactive. Without more data it's hard to say more, but while the Windrunner philosophy is explicitly reactive ('protecting' implies an agency you are preventing from doing something) Edgedancers seem a little more 'go find things to help'. Regarding Mraize - I don't really agree with the interpretation that his philosophy is dog-eats-dog. It's more of man-doesn't-eat-man. He's not saying that everyone is a hunter and/or quarry to someone else; he's saying that some people are hunters and some people are quarry. This is really just a second tier distinction between e.g. sentient versus non-sentient. It's okay to eat cows because they aren't really intelligent. It's okay to 'feed' on quarry because they aren't really enlightened actors. His philosophy is that there are different classes of people, rather than that everyone is out for themselves. Regarding Sons of Honor - It's worth noting that as far as the Sons of Honor know, the Desolations are the cause of the return of the Heralds. Whether or not this is a worthwhile trade is a separate discussion, but the main problem here is again that there is a gross misestimation of their error bars here. They do pretty terrible things based on pretty sketchy deduction, which is really the problem (if they were actually correct, it would look quite a bit different, even if it doesn't make their actions completely right). Regarding Mr. T - it really comes down to how well he's dealing with his errors and unknowns. The biggest problem is that he's relying on a plan that he can't really validate any more (if his super-smart self made a mistake, it's almost impossible for current-T to catch or fix it within the context of the whole plan). He can't actually identify when he falls off the plan unless the possibility was already included in the plan (in that case he's not really falling off the plan); this has been pretty much done to death with the Foundation analogies and all of the problems it runs into. So for the most part, I agree with Kaladin's approach - it's a local-level approach (stick with what you have lots of information on, don't take wide-sweeping actions if you don't need to until you have plenty of data unlikely to be overturned by new data) that defers decisions until they have to be made (don't worry too much about the Parshendi Honorspren person until you have a specific instance, worry about actions that can't be deferred without severe consequences). It's not explicitly spell out this way, but this is basically how it's evolving (it's also possible that it only looks like this by coincidence).

There are seasons, but they generally last only a few weeks and they are unpredictable in length: The main exception is that the Weeping, which is probably an early spring/late winter analogue: It never seems to snow, so the Weeping might really be the equivalent of one of their winters, though it doesn't seem quite cold enough for that to be the case. In the first quote, the winter appears to occur immediately before the Weeping, so a spring analogue seems about right. However, it might also be the case that spring/summer/fall/winter seasons are independent of the Weeping seasons (this would make sense if the seasons are truly random; if they're just hard to predict like highstorms, it would probably make more sense to be aligned with the highstorm/Weeping patterns). The seasons do seem to follow the same order as on Earth - at least, spring and summer appear to be adjacent and summer comes after spring:

I don't think it's really that important for the squires to be able to get around quickly. From a tactical perspective, it would be pretty reasonable if the squires primarily held ground after the Windrunner achieved breakthrough or dealt with a enemy attack. The main problem Kaladin has is not that he needs more firepower (he by himself is probably enough to deal with any typical force, let alone a whole squad of Windrunners) but he needs people to cover areas where he's not, and hold out when things get bad until he can get there (this is effectively what happens at the end of WoR). So Kaladin flies around putting out fires, the squires (probably working with Stonewards) come in after to hold the ground and protect the area from any moderate threats, standing on against bigger threats until Kaladin can get back to deal with it. Air Cav + heavy infantry, basically.

It's actually not clear that Mr. T knows Shallan can surgebind (suspects, probably). In particular, when Szeth talks about a Surgebinder at the Shattered Plains, his first assumption is that it's Jasnah (despite being confirmed dead) even though he knows for certain that Shallan is at the Shattered Plains. This is a weird assumption if Mr. T knows that Shallan can surgebind. In particular the quote talks about Shallan being trained, but it doesn't say what, specifically. The specific quote is an aside from the conversation between Mr. T and Adro where Adro brings up the possibility that Shallan is a surgebinder, but it's not clear the aside is directly related to the specific conversation at hand or is just referencing conversations they've had about Shallan in the past.

We don't actually know that Gavilar was part of the Sons of Honor. We know from WoB that Taravangian, for example, received his blessing and curse from the Nightwatcher after Gavilar's death - so it's unlikely Gavilar would have known what Mr. T would have done with the revelation about the visions. Likewise, he could have shared something with Amaram and/or Restares that was either misinterpreted or had the wrong points emphasized (Gavilar might have asked e.g. for Amaram to look for Heralds - Amaram's understanding of the causal relationship between Desolations and Heralds is obviously mistaken). Both Amaram and Mr. T at the time were likely among the most honorable and trustworthy individuals Gavilar knew. It's worth noting one of the people Gavilar suspects of sending Szeth is Restares; that makes me think the relationship between Restares and Amaram might have been something established after Gavilar's death, and Restares is involved in 'corrupting' Amaram. Regarding that last point, it's worth noting that Amaram initially doesn't go for the Shardblade. In particular, it's after a long debate with Restares before he finally decides that he's the best choice to take the Shards. Amaram takes the Shards not because he thought Kaladin couldn't use them; he takes them because Kaladin refuses them and Restares convinces Amaram that Amaram is a better choice than random Joe Spearman (which is much easier to accept than 'Kaladin couldn't use a sword').

Sadeas does seem to change in characterization between TWoK and WoR, but this is likely because we only really see Sadeas from Dalinar's perspective. Sadeas's reasons for change is well supported in Sadeas's PoVs, where we get a pretty clear explanation as why he's been changing: As he's getting old, Sadeas is becoming more and more aware of his mortality, and increasingly wants to leave some legacy behind; being the power behind the throne is less and less attractive. The most straightforward way to read this is that Sadeas really was content with his position (being arguably the most powerful highprince, but with Elhokar to take blame for any problems) until he starts to feel his age, and becomes dissatisfied by his lack of a legacy. There may be some supernatural component from the Thrill reminding of what he's losing, but for the most part his behavior is pretty understandable without invoking any supernatural agency. Another possible factor is that Sadeas doesn't seem to have any children, and his feelings of wanting to leave something behind might be compounded by Adolin's increasing prowess: Dalinar has a legacy, even without being king - not only his reputation, but his son is another martial genius, the Blackthorn reborn (from Sadeas's perspective). Sadeas doesn't have anything comparable, and it wouldn't be surprising if he's regretting that as he's getting older. He's got limited options as to what he can do to leave his mark on the world, and the main one is to take the throne for real and get his name in the histories by conquering kingdoms.

This has been discussed before (http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/6905-analysis-of-knights-radiant-graph/) though not necessarily to conclusion. The edges imply that the Orders have both point symmetry (about the middle) and line symmetry (about the horizontal axis). The adjacent edges between the Orders are probably just indication of their shared surges. The point symmetry is still unclear, but probably indicates some kind of antagonistic relationship between the Orders or their associated spren (e.g. Honorspren vs. Cryptics). The horizontal line symmetry is perhaps the most interesting. This seems to imply that the position of the Order along the vertical axis is somehow important. Among other things, it's worth noting that the Heralds associated with the above-line Orders are all male, while the Heralds associated with the below-line Orders are all female. It seems likely that the 'height' of the Order in the graph is indicative of how much Honor/Cultivation is associated with the Order.

WoB: Regarding Shinovar and the Everstorm, there's probably a couple of weeks before it hits Shinovar from when Szeth is revived, possibly upto a month or so. It's Weeping, which appears to slow the highstorm frequency at least, and the Everstorm appears to move slower than the highstorms: The other calculations in the books regarding when they're expecting the Everstorm assumes that the Everstorm moves just like a highstorm, and are likely more suspect than the Stormfather's statement. From a narrative standpoint this is probably enough time for Szeth to do interesting stuff in Shinovar. Also, if there are no parshmen in Shinovar (seems likely) the damage the Everstorm will do is probably not immediately catastrophic (it will be bad, but probably not 'wipe everyone off the map' bad). Note Shinovar is partly protected on the west side by a mountain range as well. So there doesn't seem to be much reason to believe Shinovar won't be wrecked by the Everstorm when it hits.