Pattern

What speaks against Odium creating a golden light as ambient illumination? He probably also could create a pink light if he wanted. What baffles me is that the black figure - assumed to be Odium's champion - throws nine shadows. The Unmade are splinters of Odium, so I would expect that in such a vision, the avatar of Odium himself would throw the Unmade as shadows, not a mere champion. Combined with the golden light in Dalinar's dreamy-vision in the end of WoR, which read far too peaceful to be of Odium, I am led to the conclusion not to fully trust information given us by the Stormfather, who additionally seems to be gold-color blind. All in all it was nice to read the first chapters on one of the last hot and sunny days of the year instead of somewhen in rainy November, so the golden light fit well to my reading environment ;-)

Or it's Dalinars diary - an elogy to his lost and then found again shardblade which he never may own again. Well, the other points I wanted to comment on are already written down by others, so I have little to write and much to upvote.

I feel with you - you are not the only one. Well...it feels a bit like waking up on christmas morning and finding that the presents will be there only at lunch... I think it was a transcript from a reading - with a cliffhanger. If that chapter is there today, I really hope it's without that cliffhanger...

The spren feel the coming of a new desolation, probably because Taln starts to crack. The Thrill has been active since Dalinar's youth at least, so the Unmade where stirring for a while. So the Stormfather - being a specific spren - should also be able to sense the advance of a desolation and he should also be able to see Odiums influence on Roshar rising again. Kaladin's dreams or visions during Highstorms, where he flies with the storm over Roshar and sees wars and fighting everywhere, I take as an indication that also the Stormfather senses and sees those things and his impressions are somehow transferred to Kaladin. As far as I know, we don't know how many people receive visions from the Stormfather, either. The fact that Dalinar's visions started after Gavilar's had ended (with his death) does not mean that nobody else received the visions, too. Perhaps we will hear in some Interlude about a farmer living in distant Iri having bad dreams about the past featuring glowing knights with fancy abilities. And the order to Unite them interpreted as the need to put his herds of chulls together. The purpose of the visions is clearly to prepare humanity for the desolation. Before the last desolations the Heralds were there to prepare and teach humanity stuff necessary to fight the voidbringers, sometimes (or most times?) finding humans at a degraded, nearly stone age tech standard (need to teach bronze skills, etc.). With the Heralds in strike, Tanavast would have seen the need of a backup plan- therefore the visions sent by Honor's spren as soon as the next desolation is coming. Do we know now that the us refers to the Sleepless, or is it just assumption? (I lost track of that question a while ago.)

Funny thing is, that Taravangian probably also was at the meeting where Gavilar disclosed his visions and plans. He must have been against the plan from the beginning and distanced himself from the group. Otherwise the diagram should be Obviously we were fools...

Then it's an indication that Nale/Kalak probably have nothing to do with it. The voice in the Rhythms should come somewhere from the Spiritual Realm anyways, since the Rhythms originate there themselves. I don't think that the heralds as cognitive shadows can really use the Spiritual Realm. Spoiler SH I think it more likely that Odium (why should he though, Gavilar is on the best way to bring the desired desolation) or Cultivation (trying to prevent a desolation) intervened there. In the end the assassination didn't matter at all (seven years is not that long a delay, just enough time for Kaladin and Shallan to get out of their diapers), Taravangian has it right in his diagram: The desolation needs no usher. It can and will sit where it wishes and the signs are obvious that the spren anticipate it doing so soon. The real reason for the desolation is not disclosed yet. Perhaps Taln cracking is enough for the desolation to come. The red lightning spren were in highstorms even before Eshonai bound a storm spren. The everstorm is a new thing but of old design. It is special for this desolation and a result of the Parshendi in stormform summoning it. But even without the summoned everstorm a new desolation could have been possible. Then perhaps the parshmen still would be inert though.

Vibrant I would associate with Cultivation. And I wouldn't be surprised if the adjective were capitalized in the final version (guessing there are still some proofreads to be done).

That's probably for the same reason Szeth had to wear white. In Parshendi tradition an assassination attempt has to be in the open, the one to be killed must have the possibility to see the assassin and defend himself. So sometimes strong adherence to cultural boundaries does not yield the best results. A silent assassination would have been better but it is something like a taboo in Parshendi culture.

This would be something nobody secretive would send via spanreed, where gossiping scribes have to read and write the messages.

The spren of the other bondsmiths are just speculation at the moment. Cusicesh though was somewhere mentioned as a much less powerful spren than the Stormfather or the Nightwatcher. Somehow I had the Oathbringer prologue also placed during the time of the feast. Obviously drums are not transported in during the feast, but before in preparation.

Adrotagia is Taravangian's childhood friend and is still around him in WoR. Thus it would not be strange for her to attend the meeting, but also not necessary. Would the women only be scribes? I don't really think so, since I would write nothing down of such a precarious meeting. Perhaps a look into Jasnah's prologue shows some women running into her. Edit: No, unfortunately Jasnah misses the crucial time. It's even hard to tell whether the disturbed conversation between Gavilar and Amaram in the beginning is before or after the prologue of Oathbringer.

The Rhythms seem to be different in stormform. The old rhythms become warped by Odiums influence. I don't know whether the rhythms vary in each form though. I cannot remember something like this being mentioned. So the rhythm of Amusement should be the same for every form not being a form of power. In a form of power this would become the rhythm of Redicule - or the Listener would attune to Redicule instead of Amusement in a similar situation. We don't really know much about the variations of the listener rhythms. For example what would still be counted as the same rhythm? You could vary the speed of a rhythm, still calling the rhythm the same - or you could say this was another rhythm (e.g slow: Rhythm of Fear, fast: Rhythm of Terror). Here it needs to be clarified how much the definition of rhythm in music theory can be applied to the Listener rhythms. Interesting to hear would be the realization of the Rhythms in the audiobooks. Is there a difference in the speaking rhythms of the Parshendi lines while they are attuned to different emotions?

Yes, in the end of Interlude 14 - Taravangian in WoR (loc. 17499 in Kindle edition): "That was, at least, what the visions had proclaimed. Visions Gavilar had confided in him six years ago, the night of the Alethi king's death. Gavilar had seen visions of the Almighty, who was also now dead, and of a coming storm. This not only shows that Taravangian had been present, but also that he belonged to Gavilar's inner circle of confidants (the Sons of Honor ?). In the prologue he is almost certainly the old man in robes. It also hintes that Gavilar's visions were similar to Dalinar's. That is a second sphere, not the one Gavilar gave to Eshonai (at least in a reading Gavilar said something like "take this, I have another one" to Eshonai). Now comes the question to mind: How many spheres filled with voidlight - or captured voidspren - are there?

Now that the final version of the prologue is out, I think we can say that Gavilar does not come out better than in the transcripts of the readings. I wouldn't call Gavilars motives "religious" though. For me his speech sounds more like that of a somewhat bored-with-ordinary-life megalomaniac. He wants to unite his kingdom - or perhaps all of Roshar - and safe it also for the time after his rule. That's the megalomanic part, which is not so uncommon and perhaps not the real problem. To achieve this, he wants the Desolations to return, to create a common enemy - the Listeners as voidbringers. Humans shall be Radiant, the Listeners shall be vibrant again. The current state where most of the Listeners are without form and most humans have no surgebinding abilities is just too boring for king Gavilar. Better to burn out than fade away. Perhaps Gavilar is right though. The relative peace on Roshar is dearly bought with crippling the potential of both humans and listeners alike. The Parshendi with their remaining forms of non-power are perhaps closest to what they should be. Parshmen as premium-slaves are an abomination though. They should get back their forms. Not the forms of power - with them they are still slaves, slaves of Odium instead of humans - but the free forms the Parshendi have, plus artform and the like. So Gavilar's feeling the world is not right does not look farfetched for me. His means reaching his goals I don't approve and Szeth killing him might have delayed the desolation for six or seven more years. By the way, the desolation coming anyway shows how good a plan there was laid (by Odium?). Showing Gavilar how to make the world vibrant and magical again led him to planning to release the crucial spren necessary for the listener transformations (which cannot be all there is to it, since the Parshendi still could change their forms with limited choices). Success would mean an impending desolation. The murder of Gavilar to prevent him from doing so delayed the desolation for seven years, but the resulting War of Reckoning brought the Parshendi so close to extinction they got desperate, so they released their old gods themselves (probably not with the same means Gavilar had planned). The desolation comes anyways. As Taravangian said correctly, the desolation needs no usher. It can and it will sit where it wishes. A detail missing in the released prologue is Gavilar mentioning a second black sphere. The casual reader might think there is only one now and will stuble over an incontinuity: Gavilar gives Szeth an ominous black sphere while taking his last breaths. Now he gives the ominous black sphere to Eshonai before he is attacked (without the "take it, I have another one"). Or is there now indeed only one black sphere, which somehow comes back to Gavilar in the time between his talk to Eshonai and the following assassination? The timing for this should be very difficult and the Parshendi would have no good reason to give it back at all (my guess is Venli somehow gets a hold on it and uses the sphere for herself somehow).

The black sphere, faintly violet. Get out your sunscreen, it's UV radiation! Does it contain "only" voidlight or an Odium-spren? We also don't know whether it's a glass sphere with a cut gem inside or a spherical-cut gem. The sperical-cut gem definitely could contain a much larger amount of Investiture than a small cut gem set inside a glass sphere. We know that gems are charged with Stormlight during a highstorm. What would be the source of Voidlight? I could think of the Everstorm being such a source, but it is not summoned yet during the prologue. Lacking a source of Voidlight I would tend strongly to the sphere containing an Odium-spren (Unmade). Some Unmade are active during the time of the prologue, for example causing the Thrill of Battle or the Death Rattles. That doesn't mean there are no others still caught inside the black spheres. Of course, the sphere could be an old relic from the time before the last desolation, still charged with ancient Voidlight. That would almost certainly mean that Voidlight can be stored for an infinite time.

Resist...resist...lost it...

"Did" would indicate past tense while "had" would be past perfect. Past perfect is grammatically correct here, but it easily leads to the misunderstanding that Shashara has just had the ability instead of had spread it. If you know the story, the wiki entry is correct in the current version (had instead of did). Not knowing the details though, you might misunderstand it. @Thail seems to have been a victim to that misunderstanding, as well as me ;-)

I think there is a WoB on this saying that the heralds think the Oathpact is broken, which in fact is not the case. Guilt could be the cause for the Heralds not taking their honorblades or just the notion that they have done their duty long enough. Additionally, some heralds might be on their way to insanity (if Taln is really Taln, if the woman destroying art really is Shallash, and so on). At this point we can only speculate, but it would not be strange if the ten heralds would have transformed to the ten fools. Also Nale does not seem to be totally hale, I would call his behaviour at least sociopathic or psychopathic (I am no psychiatrist, I leave the judgement which one of those two is fitting to the experts).

On Roshar there are also spren of Adonalsium, which by definition would also contain some Odium, since Odium is a shard of Adonalsium. Taking Honor, Cultivation and Adonalsium quark spren, it would be possible to build a baryonic spren decuplet, each spren representing one of the ten orders of the KR. These would be |hhh>, |hhc>, |hcc>, |ccc>, |Honorspren>, |Highspren>, |Dustbringerspren>, |Cultivationspren> |hha>, |hca>, |cca>, |Truthwatcherspren>, |Cryptic>, |Inkspren> |haa>,|caa>, |Willshaperspren>, |Stonewardenspren> |aaa> |Godspren of Bondsmiths> I have written the combinations in Dirac bracket notation. For information, in particle physics the baryonic decuplet consists of quarks all with spin up, resulting to a total angular momentum J=3/2 (nucleons are part of the baryonic octet with J=1/2). The detailed spin-flavour part of the wave function still would have to be symmetrized in regard to particle exchange, so for example |uud>=1/sqrt(3) [|uud>+|udu>+|duu>]. The problem with this notion is that Adonalsium spren would have as much influence in surgebinding as Honorspren and Cultivationspren have. Until now we haven't seen them at all, so this is probably not how it works ;-(

I don't have WoBs at hand - and I am really bad at finding them. Fabrials we have seen so far seem to use "normal" spren, that is spren of Honor, Cultivation or perhaps Adonalsium. The gemstones of the fabrial seem to capture the spren and make use of its Investiture somehow. This would not be voidbinding. However, I don't see a reason why it should not be possible to capture voidspren (spren of Odium) too. Spoilers Oathbringer, WoR: In conclusion, fabrials using voidbinding seem to be possible for me.

Lets bring this thread back to topic. I also think the person being called Taln would be a good option for the interlude novella, especially since his delusions could give us insight into the time between the Prelude and the Prologue of Way of Kings - hopefully more than "it burns...it burns..." and, if he really is Taln, more first hand information about the Oathpact.

Nah, more like "I know what's happening in the book, hell, how can I write about the cover I am disliking, without telling anything?" Actually, perhaps the cover of the UK version would be more to your liking, though that also seems to be showing Jasnah. (I accidentally preordered the UK version before any covers were released so I didn't look carefully enough which version I ordered, resulting in a later delivery - still arguing with myself whether to cancel and order the US version or not (would be 10€ more though, so perhaps I'll stay with the UK version and buy the e-book on release...). Have a look at that cover and tell my what you think about that?

@maxal: Your assuredness that the cover is not fitting lets me think you are a beta reader already knowing Oathbringer. I would like to postpone my judgment whether the cover is fitting or not until I have read the book myself. Sexism in the cover I cannot find, however hard i look. Of course, Jasnahs pose is unnatural. Naturally her gaze would be directed to the wall she seems to be soulcasting, so we would see her highly descriptive back; lets call the pose artistic freedom... So what did we get in the first three books? The Way of Kings: Flashback: Kaladin; Prologue: Szeth; Cover: Dalinar (and Eshonai in the backgroud) Words of Radiance: Flashback: Shallan; Prologue: Jasnah; Cover: Kaladin + inside picture of Shallan Oathbringer: Flashback: Dalinar; Prologue: Eshonai; Cover: Jasnah So Jasnah was already featured in a prologue, her appearing on a cover is not so surprising then. Perhaps it's also some kind of making up for her having been gandalfed out of Words of Radiance. So perhaps she does get some good screen time in Oathbringer, not necessarily in her own POV. My thoughts on the interlude novella: I guess it will feature a side character or a main character of the past five books, definitely a character having no or only very little screentime in the main arc. Perhaps Elhokar is due and we get some more insight to his motives.

To add to this tangent: There are also stable Perpendicularities without shards, like on First of the Sun. Even more mysteries. I don't think though the Stormfathers ability to speak to someone is related to him creating a perpendicularity. That's more a connection issue while the perpendicularity transcends all three realms, in special also the Physical Realm. Probably he is able to split his attention to several places though, like we saw Preservation doing. And I am totally with your opinion on Taldains' perpendicularity not necessarily being inside the main star.

I understand the WoB that the Stormfather is omnipresent for Dalinar to use his surgebinding and does not have to be near him like a normal spren would. That does not mean that he can create the perpendicularity just everywhere. Jasnah still has to find a right place. So essentially the Stormfather has some off-time to galivant around while the Highstorm is over water and has no spheres to infuse - and during the weeping. Otherwise Roshar would get anomalous highstorms without stormlight deposits and a resulting panic amongst scholars and surgebinders ;-)