Aminar

Most likely, Bridge 4 will be targeted. They're the likely choice for revenge. It may very well culminate in the death of a few bridgeguards. But the whole thing reeks of revenge killing.

Sometimes you can't just drop a line because none of the characters on screen have a good enough understanding of what happened. We know way more about the metaphysics of Roshar than any of the PoV characters and can make inferences well beyond their understanding.

This makes the most sense. It's the central Hub. The outer ones were deactivated/broken/lost charge/what have you. And without the connection the outer ones need a reboot.

Backed this day one. I love the idea of books having soundtracks. Possibly even notes on what songs to play where. (And automated on e-readers.)

Yeah. Kal used Syl to spy on Gaz in the first book. But Sapient spren are not becoming all that common. There will never be more than say, 100,000 radiants(and that is generously high). With a world to cover they're unlikely to be able to reasonably spy on much of anything.

Unless he's starting to wonder if they're doing the right thing. He robbed a child of his father. Took his birthright. It's not hard to regret ruining someone's life, even if they aren't dead. Also the timeline lines up really well for that kid to have caused the death of Shshsh 12ish years later.

Nothing honorable yet. That said, the writing on it is super vague. And the Blackthorn was complicated, but he's not a monster yet. A ruthless jerk, but the monstrous stuff comes last. When Dalinar hits rock bottom. I kind of hope that kid is somebody we like. (Having it be Elhokar would be hilarious, but 6 is too old to have no memory of adoption)

I have a strong suspicion that Gavilar was an abusive husband and father for a while. I couldn't say whether he got physical or not(I suspect at most much less so than Shallan's father), but Navani and Jasnah both have hinted at it just a little.

Politics. It shows that House Kholin is not sweeping the death of their chief rival under the rug.

The part where they were in the middle of nowhere. I mean, they're headed to the same place, but within hours of eachother on a roadless plain the size of some countries having them approach at similar times and places is at least 1/1000. Especially seeing Tyn's operatives got onboard days of sea voyage beforehand. And then Tyn was trying to scrub her hands of the whole thing. Her plan was fire and forget. Not watch from the coast to see if it works out.

Apparently not. I thought she was entertaining. The level of coincidence in Shallan finding her was borderline appalling, but as a character she was unique(or at least of a rarer archetype than most) and thus interesting.

Interesting, but I don't see the Stormfather having that level of mind control. And we're seeing that kind of storyline among the Parshendi/listeners. I doubt we'd get a duplicate.

That's extremely unlikely. I do agree that the new murderer doesn't know who killed Sadeas. But I doubt the new murderer is just an opportunist. Everything about it screams "statement." And that statement isn't "I know who you are." It's "This is Revenge for the murder of Torol Sadeas." And they will likely keep avenging until their suspect pool is gone.

I wonder if maybe he didn't ask to be cured of his addictions. He clearly had issues with alcohol and the Thrill in the past but by the time we see him after Szeth he's sober as a stone and lacks the battle lust Sadeas craved. So part of the process to keep him clear of his alcoholism/keep him sober might have been clearing the traumatic loss of his wife. Especially if Thrill addiction and/or alcohol played into his wife's death the way drinking played into Gavilar.

Sure. But what's Mraize's motivation. The only one I can think of is sewing chaos and that's a pretty lame motivation. He's not trying to bring down Dalinar so far as we know. I could see Taravangian's faction trying this kind of thing as a new way of hindering Dalinar seeing their lead Assassin failed. But nothing Mraize has done or said gives him a motive.

Soldiers can get pretty scary. War breaks down a lot of those walls as it is. Once someone is the enemy they stop being human. I'm sure you could find a plenty of examples of soldiers doing terrible things to the enemy without much work. And once you think someone killed your leader that person becomes the enemy real fast.

One of Sadeas's soldiers. They were there long enough to see Sadeas's state when he died and have the guilt/rage to do something like this/want revenge. Ialai may be involved, but I suspect she'd be more devious. It is not Renarin. If you can't see how terribly impolitic that is you need to read up on the Sandy Hook shooting and the misperceptions it's caused involving the ASD(autism spectrum disorder) community. Brandon isn't that stupid.

Or it could just be what Dalinar said. His Spren passing information to Shallan. The Bondsmith's have extremely powerful Spren. Ones that likely alter the way being a Radiant works.

Lets take this from another direction then. I grew up in a family that deer hunts. One of my earlier memories is from november of 88, shortly after I turned 2. I watched a deer being gutted. For me this is not a traumatic or horrifying memory. It's a moment of pure wonder. I was seeing how living things worked and it was fascinating. For people that did not grow up around this kind of thing it can seem brutal and terrible. Like when I visited a farm while my uncle was harvesting chickens. The brutality of it was disturbing. Adolin grew up in a society of warriors(compared to us) at war. He was exposed to the idea of death and conquest from the day he was born. And he was raised to that violence, trained to fight at a young age. His mother being killed somewhere else would be sad. Maybe drive him to obsessively be the best so he could make sure it didn't happen again(A strong part of who he is). Make him try to find an unattainable woman that lived up to his idealized memories of his mother. But it's unlikely to cause PTSD(which is what you're suggesting). If it happened while he was there and watching it probably would. But somewhere else. Probably not. Which is to say, with fiction its better to look for "what am I missing" than "I don't buy this because it isn't what I expect." I do this kind of thing for a living(helping troubled teens deal with their issues and work towards who they want to be). For me Adolin's personality is perfectly fitting. Not the only way he could go, but a way. A way that's believable, but less open than Dalinar's guilt, Kaladin's grief, or Shallan's trauma. Like how some people hide their emotions and others don't.

It's also been ten years. In some ways the longest ten years of a person's life. (being a teenager is hard.) And kids sometimes handle that kind of trauma really well. It kind of slides over them because the context of what death means isn't really there. So them not having scars is probably characterization(although Adolin's way with women is probably the result of losing his mother). Renarin's emotions don't operate the same as a neurotypical person. At younger ages he'd have a much harder time making emotional connections with others, even his parents. So that likely(but not necessarily) insulated him from the trauma. I've seen the loss of a parent got both ways with kids on the spectrum. In both cases the circumstances behind the death have been a factor for how the memories are perceived. (I can't really go into more detail for confidentiality reasons)

Hopefully a lot of spluttering as the world falls down around them. We're already seeing a great deal of dissatisfaction with the Ardentia. Dalinar getting branded a Heretic would be hilarious. (I figure by the end he'll have a rep on par with the Heralds.)

I'm not so sure on that. Investiture seems to resist investiture. So density of investiture could affect things, as well as state. I mean. I eat steak. But a frozen steak is borderline impossible for me to eat. As is a steak the size of a mountain(at least in a reasonable amount of time). And a steak as dense as stone. We know Nightblood can manage the diffuseness of a human soul just fine. But other factors might alter that.

I suspect Nightblood will have a harder time affecting heavily invested objects. So a raw small spren is in serious trouble. But Syl with access to Kaladin's stormlight or (on a lesser level) really any shardblade spren is heavily invested enough to block a shardblade. That's more investiture than shardplate by leaps and bounds. Seemingly an unlimited amount(but more likely to be a direct link to greater sources of investiture). But I'm sure there's a breaking point. On that note... I've always wondered where all the missing blades went. I'm sure highstorms have disposed of some. And others went under the seas. But I wonder if there wasn't a purge of them when Nightblood was first lost to the skybreakers. The History seems to recent for that though.

I do think this is significant though. Maybe a suggestion of his bondability and what order his personality would work for. Maybe it suggests some level of ability to interact with Spren similar to what Rock has.

I doubt age is a factor. Maturity/experience/personality/brokenness all apply, and those are all influenced by age, so there's likely a level of bell curve where less very young people are chosen, but age isn't the important part of why that would happen.