Well, I don't think there's a fourth sword, but if there is, I'd think i'd be Uriel's. It doesn't seem like raphael, michael or gabriel to have a hidden, secret, think; that's more uriel's style. If i had to connect him directly with any artifact, it'd be the lance, though. Why? Well, because uriel is the doer of bad but nessecary thing. He was the one who smote sodom, killed the first-born of egypt, ect. ect. He's the one who acts in secret, does things which seem bad, but for the greater good. Killing the Christ seems to fit into this mold. It's not nice, certainly, but it was merciful to end his pain and he needed to die as a sacrifice, a lamb of god. So if someone forced my hand, I'd say uriel was associated with the spear of destiny.

However, i think that's the wrong paradigm. While some arch-angels might have a greater responsibility than others, I think that all the swords are essentially under uriel's purview. Why? two reasons. First, there's the quote in ghost story where Uriel comments that when the other side circumvents free will, it is his job to step in with equal power to balance the scales.  Secondly, there's the quote from Skin Game where he talks about something being expressed under "his purview," in the context of a change to the sword. This suggests to me that the job of uriel is to protect free will and the expression thereof, which lines him up with the overarching purpose of the swords, to free people of the influence of fallen Angels. That said, other archangels may be involved during specific expression's of the swords's power and faith - Gabriel might have been the one pronouncing judgement allmighty on the LoONs, for example - but i think Uriel is the overarching custodian of the swords.

Not if the knowledge and perspective he can only gain from that walkabout is part and parcel of the training, I would think. 

I think a much simpler reason exists: Harry did not, technicaly, lie to Mab. I remain convinced that, when  Harry dealt with Mab, telling her that he had come to deal in good faith, he honestly believed he was telling the truth. That's the whole point of having Molly remove the memory of contacting Kinkaid - so that he could lie without lying. Harry understood that he would be willing to serve Mab, become the winter knight, to save his daughter, and took steps to prevent that, guided by the shadow. When he told Mab that he would not try to cheat her by killing himself, he was unaware that he had, in effect, already killed himself.
Similarly, I think we can assume that Harry has not, in fact, been proven to be willing to kill himself. The central plot point of GS was, after all, that Harry's free will had been compromised when he chose to kill himself. And while Mab might not care about or understand the discintion between an action and a choice, I'm pretty sure she understands the concept of having one's actions manipulated. Though i doubt she knew about the angel beforehand, it's plausible that Uriel has told her.

Another thing: you claim that mab used elaborate word play to pretend to be in oppostition to Uriel while actualy working with him. For example, that while she says that "had he been wrong ect. ect," It's possible that uriel simply could not have been wrong. I'd disagree with this view. The nature of the future in the Dreden files does not seem to be set in stone. In DM, we see an angelic prophecy be wrong/thwarted, and Uriel himself claims that freewill can always change things. Now, it might be almost impossible for him to be mistaken, but if it weren't a possibility, if it were not actually possible for Harry to, say, make use of Uriel's offer to join captain Jack and the others, or to simply make bad choices and overspend himself, not only does free will loose its meaning, the story becomes boring and trite, as conflict loses its value. I believe we are seeing the real thing when we are led to believe that Mab is genuinely displeased with Uriel.

That said, I do believe that Mab went along with it, probably grudgingly, and that she did, in fact, gain an asset from the whole ordeal: she got a more powerfull, willfull and headstrong knight. I think Mab values obstinence, pride, and willpower over obedience, as we see both her and her mother compliment and expect Harry's resistance, and in fact enjoy it. It is after all after Harry recieves an earfull of truth from Uriel that he challenges Mab again, promising to smite her foes and lay low her enemies, and threatening her with mediocrity. What she has gotten out of the deal is a knight who dares challenge Mab herself. I think that is, in its own way, worth it in Mab's book. If he was simply meekly obedient and dependant on Mab, he would be of much lesser use. Without the lesson that Uriel taught him, he would, for one, have been killed by Mother winter and unable to stop the battle at demonreach, or might well have chosen to become a plaything of Maeve's, going with with "I'm already a monster," line of reasoning, the meak defeatism he shows before Uriel gives him seven words. He would, in other words, not have been willfull enough to resist Mab's enemies.

I'm saying that if all the Outsiders are a hive mind of some sort, I'm not seeing much difference between calling that hive mind Tehom and calling it Azathoth (or indeed calling it George.)

Because a lot of what we see of the Outsiders - mordite and mistfiends and so on - seems to me to indicate that the environment they are adapted for is immensely hostile to Earthly and NN life alike (we've seen mordite be equally deadly to humans and Red Court vampires.)  I'm not finding it particularly plausible that the Earth could have been dominated by Outsiders/Old Ones on a scale of tens of thousands of years ago, when we know the DV had dinosaurs, because it feels to me like humans living in an Outsider environment would be like fish trying to live in a fire.

Well, one possibility which springs to mind is that it's possible that being immensely hostile to earth and reality is an adopted survival trait since ariving "outside" - that originaly, they weren't so hostile, in the cosmic sense, but just bad guys, which is why they got pushed out of the world.

Are you sure? Because it seemed to get extremely overwhelming when he was actually using it. He never flew into a lusting for death rage unless he had hellfire running through his system

Didn't he have a passage about how he'd love to kill Trixie Vixen and how he was nanoseconds away from killing her in BR when all he'd done was throw coffe at her and beat her physicaly?

Some ideas for True Hope:

Someone with a terminal illness, who is still happy and has perspectives in his life.

Some strong religious believers, who have witnessed war, rape and other bad stuff, but still believe in the general goodness of mankind.

The city of Las Vegas or similiar places should be bad mojo for Skavis. Although everybody knows that in the end the bank will win, they are hoping for the big prize. Here I wouldnīt say itīs true spiritual hope but a lot of people with a lot of hope at one place could disturb a Skavis WCV.

Well.. wouldn't the second  one be faith, not hope? Anyway, funny you would mention LA; it's our city. i figured that with so many gambling their livelyhoods away or getting married in a stupor or spending all their new-won money on hookers or whatever, there'd be plenty of despair. also, they, at least partialy, run the homeless shelters...