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So I had this theory just pop into my head as I was reading and it basically is this: Will Syl eventually choose to be enlightened by Sja-anat to better understand emotion? So far all the spren of Roshar have been of Honor and Cultivation and recently, some, touched by Odium. Odium is described as passion and emotion so it makes sense that his power would help sapient spren to better understand emotion, especially in humans. Syl has expressed a desire to better understand Kaladin and his emotions, even going to Dalinar for help. Would not then, she go to Sja-anat to become more than just of Honor and Cultivation? Maybe even Odium? We know that Odium is not going anywhere now and that he is now a part of Roshar so would it be wrong to assume that spren will start being influenced by his power? What are your guys thoughts on this? Am I completely wrong?

I know people have different tastes in characters, but I just can not stand Kaladin. It is like he cannot miss an opportunity to cry and be emo for the rest of the chapter. I understand the depression he is going through but it is just getting overwhelmingly annoying.

So I wrote Bridgeboy(a parody of Gaston. It's not very good.) And I tried to do Lightweaver(a parody of Believer by Imagine Dragons. But it's hard. Any help?) I present: We Don't Talk About Moash! Any suggestions for fixing the struggling rhythm are welcome. MAJOR RoW spoilers follow: Also Surface Pressure for Kaladin is one I've thought of but not started. Any takers?

On a whim earlier today, I decided to see what might happen if I fed the opening lines of the prologue of WoK into a bot and watched what it came up with. Bizarrely, it seemed to have some idea of what the Stormlight Archive is, who some of the major characters are, and even concepts like bridge crews, lighteyes, spren, etc. It also managed to be marginally coherent, at least until the character limit ran out. Of course, being a bot, it has no idea of the context of anything, and so ended up producing a twisted funhouse mirror version of WoK where Kaladin and Bridge Four are trying to build a bridge under the not-so-watchful eye of a nameless king, while Kaladin is apparently pretending to be Sadeas's son for some completely inexplicable reason. Oh, and Szeth may be the Dragon Reborn, but I'm not entirely sure on that. The text I gave it was, of course, "Szeth-son-son-Vallano, Truthless of Shinovar, wore white on the day he was to kill a king." The bot I used was here:https://app.inferkit.com/demo As for the "story" itself, behold behind the cut! And yes, I know it cuts off in mid-sentence. That's part of the charm;).

It's mostly all in the title. If Kaladin somehow went brain dead, would Shai(if she somehow was on Roshar) be able to recreate his soul? I mean (Emperor's Soul) He hides a lot of his trauma, and puts on a front of "I'm doing fine!". The question is how well does he hide it... Also, I don't know if any one person knows all of his experiences.

One of the things I like most about the Stormlight Archives (and possibly what makes them so popular) is the moral questions is forces readers to consider. What is the right thing to do in a given situation? Szeth's biggest role in the story so far has been his work as the Assassin in White, killing King Gavilar and many other rulers across Roshar. As we all know, he did this because he was sworn to obey whoever held his oathstone, part of his punishment as a Truthless for raising the alarm that the VoidBringers were returning. His people believed it was a false alarm, and punished him. As we also know, he was actually correct the entire time, and the VoidBringers and Knights Radiant really were returning. Kaladin making him realizing this is what made him stop fighting at the end of WoR. Just before Kalading ends the fight, Szeth makes the comment that he was never Truthless, that he could have stopped the murders at any time. Kaladin counters that he's using the oath as an excuse, and that he's being a coward for not accepting that he had a choice. Presented from Kaladin's viewpoint, it's hard not to see the validity of his point. Szeth always had a choice. But in RoW, Dalinar makes the argument to Taravangian that keeping promises and oaths are part of honor. As far as Szeth knew, he was bound by a promise as part of his punishment (at least, as far as we understand how being a Truthless works), so he was honorbound to commit the terrible acts he did. But he always had the option to choose to reject the orders. Even if he had truly been wrong, and he truly was a Truthless, would it still have been honorable for him to reject the orders he'd been given? The SkyBreakers might be misguided, but they are still an order of Knights Radiant. I think it's fairly certain that this conversation is going to come up during Stormlight 5, considering that Szeth and Kaladin are travelling to Shinovar together. The two haven't interacted since their battle in the highstorm, which I suspect is a deliberate action on Sanderson's part. Honor (not the person) is obviously a subjective concept, but what do you think? How will the conversation between them go?

Some people have theorized that some of our Radiants will replace the current Heralds and re-forge the Oathpact. If so, I have a disturbing suspicion: Kaladin will eventually become the only Herald who doesn't break (he might break during the next few Desolations, but not later), and the other new Heralds will eventually be tempted to pin the whole Oathpact on Kaladin, as the original Heralds pinned it on Taln. I know, Kaladin has tried to give up before, but that is because he is more tormented than most Radiants. He would go to Braize with a lot more experience bearing up under suffering than the others.

Greetings all, With Stormlight 5 in the works I thought it worth discussing how much of Honor's investiture would be needed to re-forge the Shard. Honor spren are of course made from Honor's investiture. The higher the oath, presumably the more highly invested the Windrunner (I know other orders are of Honor, but Windrunners are the most closely linked to him). Other substantial amounts of Honor's investiture can be found in the Honor blades and the Stormfather. I imagine since the Stormfather merged with Tanavast cognitive shadow, Dalinar is the most highly invested being associated with Honor currently. Nale is a herald and Knight Radiant of the fifth Ideal, but again he is a Skybreaker, so maybe let's not count him as one to pick up the shard. Jezrien is dead. So I would rank them Dalinar>Herald>Kaladin> other Windrunners. Would reforging or combining all the honor blades and bonding it be enough concentrated investiture to cause a person to ascend? If Dalinar reaches the fifth ideal since Tanavast died cause him to ascend. Would 5th ideal Dalinar + all honor blades be enough to cause him to ascend. What do you all think?

In the pre-chapter text (can't remember what it's called) of the Rhythm of War chapter 'A Cage Without Bars,' Harmony says that he is looking for a sword that embodied the two aspects of the power he holds, Ruin and Preservation. In the previous pre-chapter text he mentions being hampered in his ability to act due to his two held Shards being opposites, so is it logical to think of this as Harmony seeking a champion to act on his behalf against/with other Shards? If so, I have a theory. I'm not sure if there's a running theory on this, but the main Cosmere character that comes to mind for that is Kaladin. He's trained/training as a surgeon and is a skilled fighter. Particularly in The Way of Kings, there was a constant internal dialogue about whether Kaladin or his father were correct in how they could protect: Kaladin choosing to protect using force while his father protects through medical care. Kaladin is currently in a spot where he can protect using both methods, acknowledging that he needs time to deal with his PTSD and depression but is enhancing his abilities in the medical area. The main barrier I see to this potentially occuring is that due to Kaladin's nahel bond with Syl he is anchored to the Rosharan system, as per Mraize's conversation with Shallan/Veil/Radiant in part 1 of Rhythm of War. Now this is entirely conjecture, but I am assuming that by the end of Book 5 several key things relevant to this will occur: a way of transporting Rosharan Lights to other systems will be discovered, which will be linked to finding a way for Connected individuals to move outside of their systems as well. While I don't believe Kaladin is intended on being a main character for the back 5 (correct me if I'm wrong), that doesn't necessarily mean that he won't still be a major player in another form like being a champion of a Shard that isn't "native" to the Rosharan system and is thus not present for Rosharan events all the time. If there is an existing theory thread regarding this, could someone please point me in its direction?

So we had a bombshell with the reveal of SP4 and a future cosmere through a first person view from Sigzil and his potential deadeye/cognitive shadow friend. We also get a cameo from our favorite 4th ideal wind runner! So now I'm curious what everyone thinks, is Sigzil saying this because Kaladin is dead or could it be like a situation where Kal disappears or becomes a cognitive shadow? Also, where do we think this fits into the cosmere? Around the time of sixth of dusk sequel? Maybe before that? The scadrian technology seemed pretty advanced in that unpublished work but there is also scadrian artifacts found on the SP4 planet. Does anyone know a wob that helps place SP4 relative to stormlight 6-10?

Hello, everyone! This is my first post here on the 17th Shard, so please excuse if I mark anything wrong on here. I do not know if this has been said anywhere else, but while listening to one of the Shardcast episodes theorizing about who would die in Stormlight book 5 and who would survive to make it to the back half, I had this thought come to me. It is a common theory that Kaladin will not make it to the back half of the Stormlight Archives since so much of the front half has centered around him, and so much of his character arc has already been completed. Thinking about how complete Kaladin's character arc feels made me realize how incomplete Moash's character arc has seemed to me. I do not know if anyone else has felt this way, but throughout all of the books it has felt like Moash should be an important character, but comes across more as a side character that sometimes is heavily involved with the plot. In theory, Moash's character and story arc seem really important and impactful, but I remember not feeling that way completely while reading the books, like I was waiting for more to be done with his character. In short, if Moash's charcter arc ended anywhere near where it is currently, I feel like I would be left with the impression that he was not used to his fullest extent. In addition, Kaladin cannot just die in book five. If he does, he needs to go out in a big and important way. He is too important of a character for anything else. This leads me to my theory. I am not sure to what extent spoilers need to be marked, so I am just going to mark the entire thing as a spoiler. Thoughts?

We have seen some of best moments in Cosmere, and some which disappointed us in Rhythm of War. We have our favorite moments from our characters and then there are those moments which have gutted our souls out. I created this thread so that we can share our sorrows (and joyful tears) and divide them among ourselves, discuss what broke our hearts in ways tears started to spill from our eyes. I'll start by stating the moments which wrecked me apart: Do share yours, our Rhythm of Melancholy.

This is a romance fanfic between Kaladin and a character I created. I intend for these happenings to follow events from the actual books. A secret romance if you will. The books touch on Kaladin’s love life a little, but it's never explored even when he has a partner! So this story is a way of filling that gap. Thank you for your time. It's a fluffy story. Let me know if you're interested in reading more! Feel free to let me know where to expand. I don't really write stories, be gentle

So, Kaladin is made a slave and the surviving members of his squad are killed so that Meridas Amaram can get a shardblade. We know that Amaram doesn't like to share the credit, but is a big fan of sharing the blame, but... Amaram implies that his buddy Restares was the man who was "right". When he is talking to a storm warden about killing the remaining members of Kaladin’s squad. Why did Restares want that? Just in case there is a person who clicked by accident and hasn't read Rhythm of War... This raises the big question... What were the Sons of Honor really doing? We will get some answers from Gavilar in book 5, hopefully, but with Ameram, Ialai and Restares and his interludes there should be some sorts of clues.

I listened to the Shardcasts on BAM and Kaladin and had a thought. I won't be too surprised if this isn't how it goes down, but I like the theory. I'll have to lay out a few pieces first though. First, I'm going off the idea that BAM is an Unmade that has Connection powers, which normally is just a power of Honor, but somehow she has access to it despite being of Odium. It's not crucial to my theory, but I do like the idea that was presented in the Shardcast that BAM was a spren of Roshar prior to becoming an Unmade of Odium, and I could see that BAM, who was/became Connected to the Singers, had a special relationship to the Singers and wasn't happy when humans barged in and spread from Shinovar which lead to her deciding to join Odium. Next piece, this theory has to do with whatever was going on with Kaladin's glowing yellow eyes when he took down Lezian. As far as I can think of, this is the only time we see someone actively using Adhesion to rend or kill someone. Szeth uses Adhesion as part of his collection of tricks to immobilize or cause mayhem when operating as the Assassin in White, but I don't think he kills someone directly with Adhesion. We know that BAM could grant Singers forms of power, so I'm wondering if there's some connection between Kaladin's weird glowing yellow eyes and BAM, though I don't know what that would be with BAM imprisioned. Third piece, now it could just be Bondsmith-specific hijinks, but this ties into why Odium's forces have never been able to free BAM themselves. We know that after Nergaoul was captured by Dalinar, they chucked the gemstone into the ocean as you can't easily hide an Unmade because it's extremely visible in Shadesmar. So if they know where BAM is, why not free her? If she's in a gemstone, presumably they would break it if they could, so it's not something that could be fixed with just an application of force. Hence my wondering if they have to have some sort of Adhesion or Connection power in order to free her, considering Kalak thinks they can free her, something reserved for those on the side of Honor, which would make sense why Odium's forces can't do it themselves. Last piece that ties this theory together, is that when Dalinar bound Nergaoul, he followed Navani's directions on how to capture a spren - you draw it in with something it loves and understands. Of all of the characters we've seen, Kaladin seems to be the only human that really cares about protecting the Singers. Others follow his example, but he was the one that made Rlain equal in Bridge Four, and we saw him emotionally ripped up at the battle in Kholinar when his human and Singer friends were killing each other. He also can/has used the power of Adhesion, Connections, in order to kill which is almost oxymoronic. BAM is deeply connected to the Singers and granted them forms of power, possibly so that they could kill to protect/retake their homeland from the human invaders. I think that might let her Connect with Kaladin in a way different from anyone else. All of this is why I think that not Shallan, but Dalinar and Kaladin might be the the ones to free Ba-Ado-Mishram. Thoughts?

So, Kaladin is weird. "Son of Tanavast" rather than "Son of Honor" (possibly a direct descendant of Tanavast?!), the weird spear skills (apparently from Syl but I don't know if I believe that), the weird eyes right after he killed the Pursuer (I think that's from using Adhesion against its natural Intent but why would that mess up his eyes?), and lots of other little things such as his ability to fly nearly on par with Leshwi despite his lack of experience. Hell, he could fly on par with Szeth at the end of WOR which is crazy. But there's one thing that, upon re-read of TWOK was brought to my attention. Kaladin used all of his Stormlight when he used a Reverse Lashing of a large enough scale to pull an entire volley of arrows into his shield. After having read Warbreaker, I think Kaladin was left in a state similar to a Drab after he did that. He says that thinking is difficult and the others say his skin has gone ashen. Did Kal use his Innate Investiture to power a Surge? Is that something normal Radiants can do or is it a Kaladin only thing because of all the other weirdness. Or as suggested by the text, did he just use too much Stormlight all at once? I'm confused and excited and I want to hear other people's thoughts. What's up with Kal?

We know it's theoretically possible to be a Radiant of two Orders, if the Spren are willing. There are hints that Kaladin is in some way uniquely linked to Tanavast (him being called "Child of Tanavast" vs other Radiants "Child of Honor"). The Stormfather is (among other things) Tanavast's Cognitive Shadow. What if Dalinar dies in book 5 and Kaladin becomes the Stormfather's new Bondsmith as well as a Windrunner?

Hey everyone! Here’s my latest Cosmere piece! Contains spoilers for SA 1-4. Stick around after the credits below to get the backstory on this song. Lead vocals, piano, acoustic guitar, drums, bass, trombone choir, strings, male choir: Joe Byerly Syl's vocals, female choir: Sharon Byerly Mixing, mastering, electric guitars, percussion and choir VST's: Infamoti - https://bit.ly/infamoti Artwork: Pam Hage - Queen of Eagles https://www.pamhage.com/ Download links: WAV: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Zh1kI7D7fJKCmyVipE6h1urJ_1l93Eim/view?usp=sharing MP3: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xQidEmb0VikAGtWotlBiUyJzNwGvbCKI/view?usp=sharing _____________ To be honest, when I first read The Way of Kings in 2013, I loved but didn't understand Kaladin. He seemed... beyond me, somehow. As his backstory unfolded, I realized how little we had in common at that time in my life; I settled into a good place where I really enjoyed watching him grow and change, accepting that I could invest myself in a character's story without having to fully understand his experiences. In the summer of 2019, my wife became pregnant for the first time in our marriage. We had been married 7 years, 6 of which had been spent trying to grow our family. Weeks later, that child died in the womb from unknown causes. I suddenly understood a little of Kaladin's pain; I was unable to protect my unborn child. We struggled for a year, wrestling with ourselves and God, days blurring into weeks, then months, as we sank into depression. We were surrounded by people who loved, held and heard us, but it took a long time to even begin to move forward from the silence, the grief and the loss. As we slowly crept out into the light again, we chose to trust that continuing the journey as unashamedly broken people was better than pulling the covers over our heads for the rest of our lives. We went to counseling, examined our faith on deeper levels, and spent lots of time with friends and family, sharing what had happened to us and soaking up the encouragement and love of others. In the fall of 2020, months before the birth of our daughter Jane, the chorus of Windrunner began to take shape. I wrote this song to help me move forward in my journey; I hope it helps others as much as it helped me.