This is my reaction blog for Wind and Truth. Beware of spoilers! Index post here.

Title: Book-Quartermaster

Sounds like a librarian, militarized (i.e. Alethi), but this is right after Syl promised to show us her possessions, so I'm not sure if it's really what it sounds like. 

Icons: Nale

Maybe there's Skybreakers supporting the Heavenly Ones in Shallan's section? Just and Confident as heraldic attributes are fairly widely applicable, but morning about them jumps out as matching the title or the supposed next scenes for either of our current viewpoint characters. 

Epigraph: Oh right. Szeth is a skybreaker. The beginning of his quest would explain the icon. As for the epigraph itself, yes we know that this turns out to be important. I guess the temporal sequence is being highlighted here? Szeth choosing to undertake the quest precedes Kaladin listening to the Wind, so none of the early interactions with Wind before she spoke to him at the beginning of the book count for Jasnah’s purposes. 

When you say “scribe’s supply depot,” does that mean the text archives or the spare parchment reserve? Because it's a different thing if we're entering the national library as compared to Staples. I'm guessing it's closer to the former. 

Oh, he's drawing stares not because of who he is as Stormblessed, but because he's a non-ardent man entering the domain of writing and reading and research, all feminine pursuits.

Kal as Syl’s "pack human" clearly merits the archivist’s disapproval. That disdainful sniff says it all. I'm curious about how often Syl would have come here to develop even a passing familiarity with these people, not to mention the accumulation of possessions that she can't even hold herself.

The woman is also not super impressed at serving spren, either. Apparently Sylphrena had to get Navani to pull rank and give her permission to access whatever books and materials she needed. 

Movable type is now in use, though still in early stages of making an impact on the industry of book production. The innovation came out of Jah Keved, sounds like. I'm kinda surprised it wasn't Azish with their love of bureaucracy and paperwork. This printed copy of the book is considered disposable, though, so the technology is doing its job and bringing prices down. Interesting too that Syl calls out the difference as being less smooth, with the words “broken up.” Going by the women's script, I wouldn't have expected any sort of flowing lines between letters like in the handwritten/cursive forms of earth languages using Latin alphabets, for example. Obviously there would be annoying differences for someone accustomed to reading hand written materials, but that's not the description I would have expected. Then again, mechanically printed typefaces being blocky rather than smooth is a common feature, so maybe it's just my unfamiliarity with Alethi that's giving me a false impression of the language. 

Oh, it's The Way Of Kings. I forgot that Syl was planning to be his scribe. I vaguely recall that coming up early in RoW. Good to see she's following through, I guess, though it's hard to imagine how she's going to perform that function when she can't hold a reed to scribe with. I presume she can read, but don't remember for sure. 

The archives are filled with logic spren, which must make the scribes and ardents happy. 

Huh. Now I'm wondering how logicspren respond to logical fallacies and whether that in itself would be a beneficial tool for vetting one's thought process. If so, I wonder what the limits of that would be, and what additional biases you might fall afoul of by relying on a magical reflection of humanity’s beliefs about logic. Could get deliciously circular. I want Shallan to ask Pattern about this at some point!

Syl referencing genitalia as a chull makes me immediately think of the profanity filter here on 17S. I don't know if it is still in use, but for a while there were cosmere terms like chull that got automatically inserted into posts in place of rude language. An inspiration for this scene, perhaps? 

Syl is clearly having fun messing with this woman. “Sometimes I feed it grass” indeed. 

“Do you even exist?” : One of those sensitive questions that you can casually ask without risk of offense. Good going, Kaladin. (Even though it's a relevant question that many fans were likely wondering about themselves. I suspect the answer is no, and the clothes she creates are substance not covering.)

The idea that Syl's default form is a copy/reflection of who she is on Shadesmar makes sense, but then why does Lopen's spren hardly ever take humanoid form and constantly shift into new shapes despite Syl saying that changing takes extra effort? There's someone more individual to this.

Oh, they have quills now. Those “exotic pens” might be light enough for a spren to handle. Yes! Syl can do it, barely. Takes a lot of effort, but she can write with it. 

Ooo, the archivist is very judgy and disparaging here. Don't you be mean to my Syl! Seems like Kaladin agrees with me, and he's going to call her out on it. 

Oh, he did that in a much kinder way than I expected. Still harsh, but leaning into his newfound role as therapist, pushing her to get help. 

That shamespren is a reminder that having your emotions broadcast for all to see has major impacts on how interactions work, and would be considered a major drawback to people coming from other (earth-like) cultures. Navani supercharging the tower and drawing in so many spren will exacerbate that issue. 

Yes, this was the library, though the supply of materials like Syl acquired drives home that it functions differently from any library I've used.