Shardlet

I think you misunderstood what Skinnylipid wrote, Argent. He did suggest that that was the reason the Heralds abandoned the Oathpact. He said that sometime after they bailed, one or more of them came to the conclusion that the proliferation of surgebinders led to the desolations and that as such they asked the KR to disband and have been 'discouraging' surgebinding ever since.

Syl can carry things, but I doubt she can be stuffed into a bag. As to Wyndle, he has no clue why Lift can touch him especially to the extent of climbing on him.

Agreed, definitely an ideal.

@ Argent- Although the bonding is not quite the same (less give and take), it is a good analogy.

I think Kaladin not accepting the blade was mostly Kaladin and very little (if any) Syl. Kaladin was sickened at the thought of taking the blade that had killed his men who were the closest he had to family. It would be something like someone shooting and killing your family and then you choosing to keep and use the gun the guy used to kill them. Most people would have a hard time stomaching such a thing.

Pretty sure, but I don't have time to look through the annotations for HoA right now.

Well, we do know that Kaladin has greater efficiency with stormlight than Szeth. The easy evidence for this is that Szeth leaks stormlight like a sieve and he also can't hold his breath with stormlight nearly as long as Kaladin can. As to a comparison in the strength of their lashings, we'll likely see evidence for that in WoR.

It is possible that Sazed removed the blockage. But, the spikes are also beneficial to the Kandra because of the enhancemnt they provide. Sazed is clearly not above using existing spikes, so I don't see why he would have a problem with the Kandra continuing to use them. I also could see Sazed not removing the blockage and only allowing a select cadre of trusted Kandra use spikes because sentient shapeshifters are dangerous business.

Not canon as far as I am aware. The effect of the ideals may each be different and may further vary from order to order. We have only seen a couple of power-ups so far.

I suppose I should have fleshed it out a bit. I suspect that Ym and his friend have been together for a little while at least since he is consciously and intentionally using regrowth. It was intended to be a support of your point that they had progressed to a somewhat substantial level in their bonding.

The mistwraiths do breed though. No, you do not have Kandra babies, but all mistwraiths (including the naturally born ones) are Kandra in potentia. The spikes unblock their sentience is how Brandon described it if I recall. They do not grant it, they unlock it. Edit: We know that the one who gave the earring to Wax was MeLaan.

It does not match the description of Tai'na either. Rysn jumps from the head. There are no trees on the Santhid. And the Santhid has a great big fat eye at the water level.

Although there is surely a great deal of information in the construction of the chart, I am rather hesitant to interpret it quite so empirically. I think the characteristics I cited are stronger evidence than an interpretation of the table. As to the cousins, my idea would properly mean that windspren and honorspren are different, but closely related. They may even be described as cousins.

The cryptics are the loose end to my spren theory. Because I don't think that they are in the cognitive realm. They do not apparently manifest when Shallan goes to Shadesmar even though they were right there near her in the physical. So, the jury is still out for me on the cryptics. Well, they are splinters. They are not just of Honor though. They are splinters of Honor and Cultivation jointly. I surmise that each type of bonding spren has a different composition of Honor and Cultivation. As to the voice of the cryptic. It is so far unclear whether a single cryptic is speaking each time or whether one time it is one cryptic while another time it is a different one. (I suspect it is one, but it is unclear nevertheless).

They definitely do surgebinding. Ym uses regrowth on the kid's feet.

I don't think he needed to change the Kandra, since they already bred true as an independent species from their origins. In contrast, the Koloss were essentially human, but had no capacity to breed true. Something needed to be done to help them since you had this group of people that Sazed would have felt have a right to exist, but were rather incompatible with society. I wonder about how Sazed accomplished this since there doesn't seem to be anything to suggest that there were females who had been spiked to become Koloss. I also wonder why he didn't simply take away their spikes and heal them. It seems that would be the simplest and best solution.

First off, Welcome, Magnus. Glad to see you jumping in with both feet and posting a great theory as your first post. This is a great parallel to the Oathpact. One thing that must be considered in contrast, though. At the Seattle signing, Brandon indicated that the Heralds chose to take part in this and continued to choose each time they survived a desolation. They are willing and knowing participants.

I am disinclined to link Ym's spren particularly close to Honor. One of Ym's surges is Regrowth which means he also has Growth (since Regrowth is an expansion of Growth). This surge smacks heavily of Cultivation to me. As to the cousin comments and quote, I think bonding spren are a base-type spren with a bit of extra on the side that makes them bonding spren. I think this jives nicely with the cousin quote. I explain the same idea more in depth in the What spren is Wyndle thread.

Kurks quotes are very on point to this question, I think. Here is my basic idea on bonding spren using Syl and Wyndle as examples. Both quotes that Kurk provided were the foundation of this idea so it was terribly convenient that he provided them. Just a note, I lifted this forthcoming paragraph in it's entirety from a post I made in the What spren is Wyndle thread: I personally suspect that bonding spren are basically a base-type spren with extra umph on the side. So, Syl is a windspren as her base-type, but an honorspren because of the extra. This extra bit gives her heightened self-awareness with a distinct personality as well as the capability to bond with a person and provide them with enhanced ability via some symbiotic relationship. From Wyndle's comments, it seems he retained his full self-awareness because he came directly to Lift from the cognitive to initiate the bond. It is even conceivable that the first stages of bonding were accomplished while Wyndle was in the cognitive realm. In contrast, Syl has apparently been floating around the physical for quite some time and slowly regained her self-awareness and knowledge as her bond with Kaladin progressed. She manifested initially as a windspren (her base-type) because she needed that bond to access those portions of herself that make her more than a windspren.

I personally suspect that bonding spren are basically a base-type spren with extra umph on the side. So, Syl is a windspren as her base-type, but an honorspren because of the extra. This extra bit gives her heightened self-awareness with a distinct personality as well as the capability to bond with a person and provide them with enhanced ability via some symbiotic relationship. From Wyndle's comments, it seems he retained his full self-awareness because he came directly to Lift from the cognitive to initiate the bond. It is even conceivable that the first stages of bonding were accomplished while Wyndle was in the cognitive realm. In contrast, Syl has apparently been floating around the physical for quite some time and slowly regained her self-awareness and knowledge as her bond with Kaladin progressed. She manifested initially as a windspren (her base-type) because she needed that bond to access those portions of herself that make her more than a windspren. As to Shadesmar being called Shadesmar, seems to me that it essentially means sea (mar) of ghosts (shades) or something like that. This seems an apt interpretation since the portions of Shadesmar that correspond to land in the physical, are made up of beads that are at least representations of the cognitive aspects of everything on Roshar. Each bead presumabley has the ability to communicate in some manner (as shown by the goblet that Shallan soulcast). It is essentially a sea of ghosts. Edit: As to Wyndle's teaching efforts, these seem to be principally concerned with training her to use her new abilities. He attempts to give her a technical understanding while she is only interested in a practical understanding.

IDK, it seems a skilled kandra could work around broken face bones by stitching pieces together with muscle and tissue on the inside of the skull so that it doesn't show up on the outside. Broken arm or leg would not work because those are load bearing bones, per se. but skull and face is pretty much cosmetic for a kandra, neh?

It is an animal that is described (in the Rysn interlude) to be very rare and that even a corpse (pretty much rules out them being spren if nothing else does) is worth a small fortune. As to the correlation between the dragonwasps on the KR table, the larkin in the Rysn interlude, and the stormlight sucker, the physical description of each matches rather well.

@ Mailliw and Windrunner- Besides, one Ring to rule them all would be a bit corny.

That also suggests that he is very close to Cultivation on the Cultivation/Honor-spren-composition-scale. Which is another reason why I think Wyndle is a cultivationspren. Edit: given the spren we know of so far, I would guess that the base spren-type for Wyndle would be a lifespren in the same way that Syl's base spren-type is a windspren.

Nice to have a bitter and depressed god. Especially going into a desolation so bad, it is called the Everstorm.