Welcome to my liveblog of Rhythm of War! Index post here. Beware of spoilers.

Chapter 97 (Freedom)
Icons: Nale. This one confused me at first, but in addition to Justice, Nale is associated with Confidence. Navani’s research coming to a head and giving her a shot of self confidence along with something tangible to contribute is a good fit for that herald to head the chapter (assuming that’s where it’s going, based on the preceding notebook page.

Epigraph: So it’s both. Mishram (and that’s an interesting shortening of the name that I want to consider at length for patterns) is pitiable for the captivity she suffers, but her extended imprisonment may have adversely affected the underpinnings of Roshar and “all spren”. Which is plenty ominous and suggestive without actually giving any concrete clues on what to look for in speculating further. Thanks Kelek! You’re a gem ;-) 
(pun fully intended)

Navani is going all in on this research thing. And yet, her notes still look as beautiful as the preceding art page. I get the sense that her idea of disorganization doesn’t match mine. My lab notebooks are way worse than that, especially when I’m in the middle of experiments with loose sheets of paper everywhere. Navani, I’m proud of you for learning to do things the right way.

Oh, she’s looking specifically for the opposite of Voidlight. That’s obvious in retrospect, but from the prior chapters I’d been expecting her to be working toward the opposite of Warlight, the fusion of Honor and Odium’s investitures. What she’s actually doing makes way more sense, and could possibly even serve to counter/reverse the unmaking of the Sibling, if it chases out the voidlight that was already injected. Obviously you’re not going to make the antimatter version of the power your own side needs to win. 

She’s using a trombone and a slide whistle in her experimentation! This is delightful, and I have such a comedic mental image of how she’s using them in her meticulous science experiments. Please tell me that someone has made art of this. If they haven’t, I may need to see about commissioning something from one of the many amazing artists in this fandom. Hmm. I’ve noticed that the illustrious illustrator Botanica is following my liveblog (Yay! I’m flattered you consider it worth your time). I humbly submit this as a concept worth considering, if you haven’t done so already. 
EDIT: I asked on discord, and someone shared that there is in fact an illustration of this scene. You can find it here, based on the “oven kid” meme that I hadn’t known existed until now. 

Yeah, phase shifting the frequency of a tone isn’t going to directly phase shift the effect it has on physical objects or passage through a medium. I’m glad you’ve discovered destructive interference, but what you need is something that changes resonant nodes in a predefined medium, and I’m not convinced that’s even possible.

She’s getting good enough with tones that she can manually draw out light! Go Navani! Look who’s an expert now.

I’m not sure I even understand what she managed to accomplish with the plate. Is she changing the harmonics while leaving the root frequencies the same?

Oh, so Intent is involved. I’m kind of surprised it works through the plate, then. It’s a step further removed than humming. 

Oh, smart. She’s devising a universal power converter to change investiture to the desired flavor in stepwise fashion: First remove the old flavor, then add a new one. If this works as she’s imagining it will, then the limiting factor will be Intent…the exact thing that gives investiture its flavor in the first place. It makes a great deal of sense, and emphasizes both the utility and the limitation. Gathering a group of people together to share their intent (hypothetically, all the captured humans in a giant tower city, to name a random example) you can process a great deal of investiture at once. At the same time, a planet’s entire population is not going to stack up favorably against the Intent in a shard, or even an Unmade. This will be a small-scale, precision tool rather than a cosmere-upending weapon.

I do wonder whether the process would be able to halt at that middle point, the undifferentiated state. I’m guessing that any “neutral” investiture will quickly take on the flavor/intent of whatever it meets through simple resonance, but if it can be isolated would it correspond to original Adonalsium light, as an all-in-one sort of superposition? Or would it simply be raw power unaligned to any shard or other subdivision of the powers of creation?

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“The guard tells me of a terrible sound you have been making, something discordant.”

I’m sorry, Raboniel, you’re going to have to specify. Are you talking about the intent-phase-shifted tone she’s been designing to be antithetical to your very existence, or to her trombone playing? Because they’re both likely to set your teeth on edge.

Hm, how cold would something have to get to effect the state of investiture? Does absolute zero function in the same way in the cosmere? Do you get Bose-Einstein condensates of investiture axi? I guess matter at the fundamental level has more quantum states to occupy?

Raboniel’s care for her daughter continues to be a tender spot in her behavior that deepens her character. She is far different as an antagonist than I expected when she was first introduced.

The final node is nearby and very small. Is it in the library, hidden among the gemstone memories?

Nope, Navani’s scheming is not up to the task. Raboniel hones in immediately on the hidden plate. Not only that, the intent of creating the plate apparently trumps the intent of playing the plate, and it functions as Intended even when someone else pulls the bow. That’s both a good thing for future fabrial creations, and a bad thing for Navani’s current secret keeping. I was kind of expecting it to just sound like the regular tone when Raboniel played it.

Oh, Navani thought the same thing, or at least wondered. 

The notebook is, in fact, named the Rhythm of War. Not that we needed confirmation, but it’s nice to see the book itself make an appearance in the text.

Oh, right, the vacuum tubes. That will be a start to holding the light isolated, but I’m not clear on how the properties of the glass are kept from interfering.

Oh, it’s a big vacuum tube. Several feet long and nearly a foot in diameter. I was imagining something substantially smaller.

Hm, the tube is for meteorology and “barometric studies.” That’s a good enough justification for why they would develop such a thing.

Oh, she supposes that physical sound is necessary to propagate the tones and rhythms of roshar, and that realigning the intent will fail without isolating it that way. Hence the vacuum tube. It’s good reasoning, but why would the metaphysical sounds of eternity that you hear with your soul be constrained to movement through air? In fact, we know that Fused can utilize their powers in the vacuum of space, so I have a hard time believing they are actually separated from anything up there.

It worked! That’s cool, no matter what doubts I have to poke in her reasoning. And it’s a discovery and success she made together with Raboniel. I can see how this could be scaled up slightly, but it looks like once attuned to a tone, the change is permanent. How could you perform this without access to a vacuum? And how did Gavilar or his associates accomplish it? And finally, what is Navani’s true plan for her to be able to hide it under this revelation to Raboniel?

Oh, is she going to give her notebook to the other scholars and have them build something? Sweet!

Oh, wait no. It blew up? Why? Was it simple proximity and leakage into contact with voidlight? The previous sphere lasted years before it exploded under the manipulations of Navani’s scholars.What triggered this one?

Navani didn’t manage to kill her, but it was a good attempt at assassination. Almost completely deniable as well. Raboniel tried to draw in voidlight with the dagger, as Navani expected, and the explosion was naturally violent.

The daughter is nearly unharmed, the servant not quite dead. No fatalities from this bomb.

Navani observes smoke and heat as well as pressure damage from the explosion. Also, the dagger was destroyed. Actually, I wonder if the lights even had the chance to mix and react with one another, or if the anti-Voidlight annihilated with Raysium before it ever had the chance to get there. Oh, wait, no. The anti-Light was in the pommel, with regular voidlight getting sucked in. It wasn’t a Light/Metal reaction. (Also when I write anti-Light I feel like I’ve suddenly switched to a DC universe with an anti-Life equation.)

Did the plate survive? That would be bad if the bomb ruined her ability to make more.

Oh, the vacuum tube was also fine. Thats the bit far more likely to have been damaged, but I didn’t even think of it.

Oh, she’s going to inject it into someone. Has she told Navani that it’s possible to do that, or just written “reversible” in the notebook and expected her to draw conclusions? Who is she going to assassinate? It’d better not be Leshwi, and I will be surprised if it’s the Pursuer. At this point I’m expecting a mercy-killing of her daughter, which is somewhat understandable but will also be very messy. I am not comfortable with this.

Ah, yes. It was indeed the daughter. I’m surprised there’s no reaction with the Raysium, though. Also, no explosion. Would it have been more dramatic if she’d stabbed the gemheart? Probably not, but it’s hard to say.

I wouldn’t have thought much of this moment where Raboniel weeps if we hadn’t already seen Venli’s breakdown and learned about crying as opposed to attuning sorrow. This is true grief and relief, and I have to feel for Raboniel here.

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“Elithanathile”

This is the “tenth name of the Almighty.” people swear by the description frequently, but this may be the first time it’s been directly invoked. Onto the list it goes! 

Navani feels the same sympathy, even directly compares Raboniel’s experience to her own grief at Elhokar’s death.

Navani recognizes that the unmaking of the Sibling was a protracted process compared to what it needed to be, so that Raboniel could motivate her research. That’s got to be a bunch of mixed emotions.

The daughter’s name was Essu. That’s worth remembering. Raboniel is going to contact braize (through visions?) to confirm it was a lasting death.

Oh no. Raboniel sees the notebook unharmed, and instantly recognizes the assassination attempt for what it was. How will she respond to that? Also, she calls it “Our notebook” in a way that at first I thought was appropriating Navani’s work, but on reflection it really is appropriate. Just as the rhythm of war could only be created by their combined efforts, the Rhythm of War and its fruits belong to both of them. Perhaps not equally, but enough to make it theirs together.

And obviously the anti-Stormlight is the next step, because what can kill a fused will kill a spren. And, conveniently, she has a bunch of test subjects lined up and waiting.
Turns out that an arms race is not going to help when you are closely monitored and all of your research is immediately copied by the enemy. That edge didn’t last long.

Huh. Maybe she didn’t recognize the assassination attempt. Small mercies.
I guess that’s a bit of a downer ending to Part Four for Navani. 

Next up, Interludes!