FingerstyleFunk

Here's a thought on the Gift/words that occurred to me after reading your post, and might explain him stumbling over the mention of Jezrien's responsibilities. It's possible that the "words" that were "never his" really are just the mantra he keeps repeating, and in every other desolation ever they were assigned to Jezrien as the leader of the heralds. Taln's recitation is thrown off because this is a different configuration of the speech than he's ever heard before, simply because he's the only herald to return to Roshar via the Oathpact this time. Doesn't give any help at all about what the "Gift" is, though. But none of this sounds in line with the Nightwatcher's Curse/Boon deal, so I'm hesitant about it being some kind of never-before-seen-on-Roshar mind-switching/melding magic from the Nightwatcher or any other source. But hey, maybe someone should be keeping an eye out for a soulstamp/plaque?

Yeah, considering the strong functional similarities to Allomantic pewter (resisting intoxication, probably healing-related) and Feruchemical gold (eliminating toxin/poison damage, and even headaches and the like), it seems like stormlight would enable largely consequence-free alcoholism. Given all the mentions of her drinking, I wonder if Brandon will play with that idea at all. Quick, everyone get me all your spheres. I'm gonna have some glowing to do on Saturday morning.

The 17th sharders looking for him in the Purelake described him as having white hair, IIRC, but mentioned that he often changes his appearance. Definitely him.

Here, he speaks with an accent but he didn't on his introduction in Kholinar. Considering that Kholinar is in the north of Alethkar, a northern Alethi accent would be considered "no accent" there. The reason they comment on it isn't because it's a distinctive accent to them in its own right, it's because they expected from his appearance that he'd have a different accent than they do. They can't make out everything he's saying because it's overlaid with delirious-mumble-accent. So none of that is necessarily self-contradictory. I do think something fishy is going on with "the Gift and the words," though, since my current most likely translation would be the Nahel bond and the Radiant Oaths. Which a Herald shouldn't have. Or at least, it's a really strange occurrence for him to have gotten one now, for the first time ever in his very long memory, and when he's spent all his on-screen time on Roshar as a delirious mumbler. Oh, and the fracturing of his memory is definitely interesting. Also interesting that the Radiants seem to have been a failure at keeping knowledge going between Desolations... the ordinary people fighting at Aharietiam, according to the Prelude, were armed pretty crudely.

Noticed this on my reread too, but only compared the descriptions between Szeth's in the prologue and Cenn's in Ch 1 ("the side that wasn't sharp was ridged, like flowing waves. Etchings covered its length"), and they didn't quite line up so I scrapped the idea. But now that I've looked again, Kal's description in Ch 47 and in WoR Ch 12 both have the "flames in motion" which does jive with Szeth's description, at least a bit. Unfortunately, on top of that preview chapter cutting off too early to see Kal's reaction to Amaram, it also cuts off too early for us to see Dalinar react to seeing Gavilar's blade materialize in front of him. damnation you Team Sanderson. The hooks are set deep.

Adhesion doesn't really seem to work, since it's implied that there's more to a Windrunner's powers than just the 3 Lashings. The idea behind a full lashing being a pressure effect is that it creates a vacuum between the objects, which creates the impression of adhesion by manipulating atmospheric pressure. There's WoB on this, too, and someone got an RAFO asking whether that lashing would work in a vacuum. You can find a lot of the info on this in this thread (in the WoR subforum, for those who're spoiler-sensitive: http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/5836-3-lashes-only-use-the-gravity-surge-–-atmospheric-pressure-surge-abilities-are-not-in-ars-arcanum-wor-updated/ I like the idea of Jasnah's ranged soulcasting being a combined-surge effect because it explains why other experienced fabrial-soulcasters can't replicate that effect. They only have access to the one surge that the fabrial is designed to capture. Of course, that's assuming that her ability IS unique, which is far from certain, but the theory overall has a nice ring to it.

Kaladin's glyphs are Sas Nahn (plus the more recent Shash). It's the title of the flashback chapter where he gets them, even. And it's mentioned in Kaladin's first chapter that the slave brands represent the highlord's district where the person is made a slave. The guy he's talking to when that's mentioned has Sas Morom. I'm guessing from the repeated Sas that anyone interested can probably tell that Kal was enslaved in Sadeas' princedom, at least, but that shouldn't be at all surprising to anyone who knew he was in Sadeas' bridge crews. I'm not sure if Sas Nahn would point specifically to Amaram. It's definitely not his personal glyphpair, but we don't know how districts would be identified.

If you preorder the physical book on Amazon and get two-day shipping (either through Prime or paying whatever they charge normally) they'll give you Release-Day Delivery and it should show up on the 4th, whenever UPS normally drops off your packages. Usually sometime in the afternoon for me. If you're really lucky (close to the right Amazon warehouse?) and the package makes it through UPS's system faster than expected, you might end up getting it on the 3rd. That's for Amazon customers in the US only. No idea how it works for other retailers like B&N or anyone outside the US.

Nope, can't agree with you there. With the exception of Szeth, Shallan's backstory has by far the most mystery of any of the major characters. And thank the Almighty that we only have to wait until book 3 for Szeth, since I'm dying to hear that one too. It's not like Kaladin's flashbacks added much action to WoK... I'm sure we can expect plenty of that in the main plotline anyway. And hey, by comparison, this set of flashbacks promises to show a POV character actually acquiring and using a shardblade.

To those who continue to insist that the Full lashing makes more sense as a gravitational effect than an atmospheric one, I think the problem is mainly that your insticts about how much force atmospheric pressure exerts are probably way off. Below is a graph (original source, which also has a pretty good general explanation of how suction cups carry load) of load bearing capacity for suction cups, based on -0.6 bars of pressure within cup. That's -8.7psi, relative to atmospheric pressure, which on Earth at sea level is 14.7psi. Even if Rock is truly huge (150kg) that only translates to a 350mm suction cup (250mm if he's hanging from a horizontal surface, allowing us to ignore friction), with approximately a half vacuum. Assuming that the magic/handwavium involved can create something closer to a pure vacuum even between irregular surfaces, it looks very plausible for this to be what's holding the stone/Rock up. In contrast, for it to be gravitational force... let's say the stone they're using is 10kg and Kal's gravitationally attaching it to hang from a horizontal surface. That means he needs to put 15 Gs on it just to match Rock's theoretical weight. More if it's attaching to a vertical surface and relying on friction to hold the load. Note that Szeth always mentions specifically when he's doing a multiple Basic lashing, so it's less likely to be something Kal is doing instinctually. Edit: And of course WoB makes the analysis irrelevant... but I'll leave it just for the sake of helping people gain better instincts about the mechanics of the world around us.

I'm wouldn't necessarily say that he's ignoring the Codes here. Certainly, from his POV, this is a necessary step to begin enforcing discipline upon the unruly highprinces. If anyone's guilty of unnecessary squabbles it's them, and it's arguable whether any of them (shardbearers and highprinces alike) are suited to command in an army/nation that's he's trying to prepare to pursue an honorable and disciplined path. If he could just confiscate them, he would, but it's pretty clear that the only way to get a shardbearer to give up his shards is to take him down in front of an audience. Also, even before pursuing this strategy it was clear that Dalinar considered insults against the family as sufficient justification to allow Adolin to duel, and this doesn't seem too far removed.

I couldn't find any reference to spheres used outside of Vorin kingdoms in WoK, for example Rysn specifically mentions that the chickens would be "worth good spheres in the East," but (Steelhunt spoiler) It seems like spheres are pretty universal across Roshar, aside from possibly Shinovar. I still don't quite buy the soulcast spheres... it seems possible, but the bubbles/imperfections seem more likely to come from actually working hot glass to embed the gems. Also, a lot of soulcast items are specifically called out as having unexpected textures for their materials (stone with wood grain, etc). Heat damage to the stones is definitely possible, though, which is an issue I can't get around, though it's possible (considering the "magical" way the mostly seem to form) that all known gems are of ideal composition and wouldn't degrade or change color. I don't think it's likely that spheres require large-scale, industrial glass production, though. The supply of gems seems like it might not grow particularly fast, unless we start hearing specifically about gem mines anywhere (there are mines, but the products are never specifically mentioned)... but if they only come from greatshells, as seems somewhat likely, there aren't a whole lot of sources producing worldwide. So it would possible for gemcutters/moneychangers to produce spheres themselves.

Huh. That's some math I hadn't caught on to before. 40 parables = 10 orders * 4 unique ideals, plus the one common ideal. Hard to imagine it's not significant. If only we knew what more than a few of them actually are...

I'll buy the idea that holding increased investiture should give some protection against other uses of it, particularly that holding a bunch of stormlight might make a person harder to soulcast... the passive effects of holding stormlight/investiture suggest something like increasing the "solidity" of one's cognitive form/spiritual connections and this preventing external influence. All the known items that can block shardblades (shardplate, half-shards, Awakened steel) are definitely fairly heavily invested. But we really don't know where/how this investiture is acting, and shardblades work very differently for inanimate objects than for people. Shardblades just cut through inanimate things, and all the items above seem to stop the physical aspect of the blade. So it's probably not too relevant to investiture held by a person. When it comes to people, there's no physical damage. Shardblades fuzz/blur around flesh... diminishing Physical presence? I like the theory that Feruchemical gold healing is largely a matter of Cognitive form as well, and WoB is that a bloodmaker could heal a shardblade wound (so it's got impact on Spiritual linking as well)... but it seems there's not really enough evidence to link stormlight/investiture healing and Feruchemical gold in that way. It seems plausible to me, though. Very possible that Szeth's avoiding shardblade wounds even if he could recover is just a matter of ignorance (he's the first known non-Herald surgebinder in thousands of years, so how would he know he's that special?) combined with the fact that even if it CAN heal, a shardbearer you've picked a fight with isn't likely to let you live, nor are you likely to survive/escape, once you've lost use of a limb. That factor helps cover for the fact that "soul repair" seems like it could be a really overpowered aspect to infusing stormlight.

Thanks for the welcomes, everyone. Been lurking for a while, but I felt the need to do something now that there's no new preview material to wait for. Agreed that I totally didn't factor in the additional cost incurred by being part of a large, novel, and apparently complex fabrial. I figured that just helped make my numbers even more conservative. And it looks like my hasty assumption about glassblowing was off a bit. Typical blown glass (soda-lime) apparently softens enough to be worked at about 1000C, and quartz is up around 1700C. I've even found some examples of quartz crystal (though not faceted) set in glass, now that I've looked for that specifically. In fact, considering that Amethyst (a quartz variant, with the same melting point) is a polestone and so is likely used in spheres, it seems even more likely that it would be possible to counterfeit, and the loupe was indeed used for examining the gem more than for just spotting it. Quartz and glass have a very similar refractive index, while diamond's is much higher, so there would definitely be a difference in visibility and light behavior between the two, and use of the loupe suggests that a mark is small enough that this wouldn't be easily apparent to the naked eye. So I think my upper limit still seems pretty reasonable. I guess the issue for realistically figuring a lower limit (beyond what's too small to cut/facet/weigh in the first place) is whether a dun chip could be determined as counterfeit or genuine, or if it really is a small enough gem that the only way to tell would be by trying to infuse it with stormlight and seeing if it takes. It seems economically unfeasible to have a form of currency that could take as much as a week to verify as genuine, but at the same time it probably also doesn't make much sense to counterfeit anything smaller than a mark... I wouldn't be suprised if chips cost nearly as much to produce (what with the glassworking and all) as their actual gem weight value. See, for example, that US pennies and nickels each cost the mint about twice their face value to produce. Someone should maybe ask Brandon if we'll ever get some details about the Federal Reserve Bank of Alethkar?

FYI, Amazon (at least in the US, and if you have Prime or spring for a little extra shipping cost) actually ships a lot of preordered stuff early so you'll receive them on release day. This includes WoR. Can't remember which off the top of my head, but one of the WoT books I ordered actually showed up the day before release since UPS was apparently feeling extra efficient. http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201117710

It's based on the fact that Szeth's blade appears to be what's giving him his Windrunner-like surgebinding powers (all but confirmed by the preview Interlude), which is the order of the KR associated with Jezrien.

Agreed. There doesn't necessarily have to be a secret to it. Knowing a few martial-style skills (like wrestling or archery) doesn't necessarily mean that one ever expected or intended to be involved in actual fighting. Note, for a parallel, that Szeth is apparently quite an expert in Kammar (Shin hand-to-hand martial art) despite the fact that he was, before becoming Truthless, apparently an educated member of society. Of course, it's possible that even their warriors are that well-educated despite being the lowest caste in their society and near-slaves, but it seems unlikely. Edit: Of course I HOPE it's more interesting than that... I could see Rock being some kind of horneater version of Truthless, or maybe (what with the seeing spren thing) he was sent intentionally to find and attach himself to an ascendant Radiant... but he just doesn't seem that devious.

And here I go with another wall of text. Hopefully the reasoning is (semi) worthwhile: Re: Shardlet - I agree that the clear gem in clear medium isn't the best test for size if you're considering visibility, but a quick googling turned up the picture below of diamonds set in wineglass stems. My guess is that the scale is probably similar to what we're looking at with spheres (based on the look and price mentioned, I'd guess they're 1/4-1/2 ct diamonds, which is about where I placed a mark). I can't see naked eye visibility being a problem at that size, suggesting to me that that's probably the upper limit for what you'd expect a clearmark to be. There's potentially the problem of counterfeit diamonds justifying using a loupe, but I doubt they have the technology to make carbon-based diamond analogs, and quartz couldn't survive being set in glass (the melting point is too low). The simple fact of being set in a glass sphere is probably a pretty safe guarantee of being a legitimate gem. As to this, overall I agree with your point, but I think that sort of value spike is hit at a much larger size than we'd expect, since we're likely to fall into the trap of comparing too much to Earth economy/ecology. Earth diamonds start hitting noticeable exponential effects around 1 carat because they really do start becoming infinitesimally rare at weights much above that. In comparison, we have no real idea of rarity at various weights in the Rosharan ecology. Gemhearts from greatshells can get up to head-sized, so after apparently hunting most of them worldwide into near-extinction, even very large stones would be significantly less rare. We know from the Parshendi beards that not all gems are nearly that large (though not where they come from...), but it seems like gems even larger than could be found on Earth are within reach for the upper-middle (merchant) class. For example, from the Rysn interlude: Granted that "a dozen times over" is probably more figure of speech than accurate valuation, but it's still likely not costly enough to expect that even a gem that size has an exponentially higher cost than an equivalent weight of sphere-weight gems. At least not to the extent that we would expect of Earth gems. More googling shows diamonds of 50-odd carats selling for around $1million/carat (that's about 300x the per-carat price at 1ct), and that's about the size of a thumb joint. The Great Star of Africa is over 500 carats and "priceless", but that looks to be what it takes to get into the 2-4 inch range. Not knowing the monetary relation that heliodor falls into (if it's used for currency at all), even assuming it's only on par with garnet (5x diamond), that sort of weight (if things are linear) would amount to 2-3 years wages for a "common darkeyed soldier." Now, I'll agree that it's probably not linear at this point, but even if your per-carat price goes up by a factor of 5, you're looking at Vstim trading off more than a year's wage for all his guards for this thing, and he's not likely to have that much liquid cash, even as a one of the best traders around Judging from the Rysn WoR reading Compare to Shallan's journey from Jah Keved to Kharbranth over several months, costing (with, admittedly, a steep family discount) significantly less ("several magnitudes!") than 10 emerald broams, whereas the conservative estimates above would put his fabrial gem at 300 carats garnet * 5 (size inflation factor) / 10 emeralds/garnet = 150 emerald broams. And it's very possible that heliodor is intrinsically worth more than that, even at small sizes... so it seems unlikely that the size inflation factor is even that high, even at MUCH larger than a broam could possibly be.

Weird that this would be where I decide to throw in my first post, but as it happens I've been in the market for a diamond recently so I can throw in some insights on diamond size. I'm going to use round brilliant cut diamonds as my reference point, just since they're the most common on Earth... though my guess is that Rosharan gems would be cut differently. We like to cut diamonds so they sparkle from reflected light (resulting in one large flat "window" facet on the top, and a bunch of smaller "mirror" ones around the sides/bottom), while their gems have an internal light source. My instinct is that a Rosharan gem would be cut as more of a regular polyhedron, then, and so for a given weight the diameter would be smaller. But anyway... Based on the thumbnail reference, let's for the sake of round numbers say that a sphere is 15mm diameter. Since broams are the largest gems that we see encased in spheres, they might be close to that diameter... accounting for some space for glass around the sides, a 10mm broam seems a reasonable upper limit. That would put you in the range of 4-5 carats. So a breakdown of denominations and carat weights might look something like: Chip - 0.2 carats, ~4mm diameter Mark - 1.0 carat, ~6.5mm diameter Broam - 4.0 carat, ~10.5mm diameter That'd be the upper end of possibility. But I just looked up the apothecary scene where he examines Kal's dun spheres and found this: Implies that clearmarks have much smaller gems than I thought above. The diamonds in chips would apparently be practically invisible if they don't have stormlight. That makes it seem more likely that it could go something more like: Chip - 0.05 carats, ~2.5mm diameter Mark - 0.25 carat, ~4.1mm diameter Broam - 1.0 carat, ~6.5mm diameter Very possibly even smaller, though I'd be surprised if they could accurately cut gems much smaller than that, even with magnifying lenses being common enough that a non-jeweler would have a jeweler's loupe. Accurately weighing very small sub-carat diamonds would be a challenge as well. The other factor I'm considering is that Jasnah's "very valuable" soulcasting focal stones are still a reasonable size for her to wear on the back of her hand at all times, sometimes under a glove. Say, something like 10 carats (~15mm),which is still enough, relative to "currency" gems, to be noteworthy (would that qualify as being worth "many spheres each"?), but still small enough for Shallan to afford copies of. But it might suggest that even my revised gem weights are too high.