Ethrien

Does anyone know if the exact subject line "words of radiance orders" is important? The post on Brandons website didn't mention a specific subject line so I went with "Brandon sanderson - words of radiance"

Sorry if this seems a little rude guys, but some people in the Stormlight Archive Forums haven't read all the books in that Other Series. I'm four books in, and don't know if what your talking about is major or not but I'd still rather not stumble upon it here.

Its a cool idea, but I've got some of the same issues as others, regarding tables not quite lining up. My main issue is with the Surgebinding table (Raw Version, Recent Update). In it we get a nice line up between Orders of Radiants and the Heralds in the border. What we don't get is a nice line up between Surges, and Heralds. We can make Jezriens Surge the left most of the two at the top or the top most of those at the far left, neither looks more correct than the other to me. How I'd approach it is to take the extra aspects from the supporting Heralds/Orders instead of Surges. So Windrunners would take both Protecting/Leading from Jezrien, their Herald; then one of Pious/Guiding from Ishar and one of Just/Confident from Nalan, the two supporting Heralds. Which leaves us with four possible combinations depending on how you want to choose the bonus attributes. 1. Protecting/Leading/Guiding/Confident; Using only the secondary attributes. 2. Protecting/Leading/Guiding/Just; My favorite for reasons given below. 3. Protecting/Leading/Pious/Confident 4. Protecting/Leading/Pious/Just I'm split between having each Order keep their primary attribute as something special to them and a pet theory I've had for a while that each secondary attribute is a lesser form of the next Order's primary. A societies Leader decides Justice for their subjects; a Confident person is ofttimes Brave; Obedience is a small part of Love, people who practice Healing need to be Learned in medicine; Giving is easy if you can Create what you give; Honest people aren't Wise but they'll still often tell you what you need to hear; a Guide Protects us by keeping us on the safe path. It's not a particularly strong theory, some of the justification above are kinda weak and I completely left out Careful-Resolute; Builder-Dependable; Resourceful-Pious; because I couldn't come up with good justifications. However I like the way it fits into this.

We've WoB that Feruchemical gold can heal Shardblade cuts, so its safe to say its not cutting the cognitive aspect. Also that cognitive healing like Feruchemical gold can heal spiritual wounds, or at least reattach two spiritual pieces separated by a Shardblade. I've just developed a strange hope, that this is the sort of thing Bridge Four covers in their 'experiments'. "Airsick lowlander, you don't need ten toes, and this will give us good information. It is important to know your limits."

I'm guessing 'PM = Prime Minister' And I'm not sure about the "there is always a Prime" justification for a PM, I read it as the more mystical version i.e. The moment the Old Prime dies, the replacement is immediately chosen by Yaezir, it just takes some time for the humans to catch up. I'd definitely say your first possibility is the more likely, that there was an obvious replacement, an Arbiter who was already instrumental to the government. The old prime dies, the week application period passes, the Arbiters spend a night reading all the last minute entries from "those fools in the gardens" as a formality, then hand it over to the man they all know deserves it. Szeth cuts his head off the next night, and two Primes have died within a week (give or take a day).

I don't see that as a separate point to number 1. While I'll freely admit to not having a lot of personal experience with torture, its use in fiction is often to get the confession you want out of the person you've decided is guilty. He heard the truth, and decided to keep applying thumb screws and hot pokers until he found a 'truth' more to his liking.

My thoughts were that since the body is using stormlight like it would use air, it would store it like air. Contain it in the lungs and filter it into the blood as needed.There is plenty of lines of description in the book comparing stormlight to blood or as being power injected into veins, however it is all similes, not really great evidence to build upon. You also make some very good points, even if stormlight is replacing the chemical reactions there is no need for it to be stored in the lungs to do so. The reason stormlight comes out Kaladin's mouth could well be because its the biggest hole in the container. The same logic could be extended to the eyes, they're holes in the skin where stormlight might escape faster and therefore would be more concentrated. @paperclip we've got WoB that when magic systems get very similar they tend to function in similar ways. So we know that Stormlight healing and ReGrowth will each probably function on the same base principle as one of the two, just don't know which.

I don't know about them holding back information, I'm assuming interrogation = torture is a fair substitute to make and I don't see the rank and file of a priesthood holding up to torture indefinitely. The way I see it "there was no visions" can be one of two things 1. What Sunmaker wanted to hear. 2. The Truth (which is still what he wanted to hear) Sunmaker needed them to confess to at least that much. It wouldn't really do for him to slaughter and torture the representatives of God on Roshar; then turn around to his people with "Hey guys, my bad. Turns out those guys really were holy. Who'd have thought it, now I'll just get back to ruling all of you I've dammed for eternity for following my orders." Edit: Just occurred to me that this doesn't really rule out 'Dark God', the priests give up the 'fabrication' line, Sunmaker gets what he whats and the priests keep their secrets.

The breath part makes a fair amount of sense, blood is infused with oxygen, and emptied of carbon dioxide as it passes through the lungs. If instead of oxygen your blood is being infused with stormlight to power your muscles, then your also not undergoing the chemical reactions that use the oxygen and produce the carbon, meaning you wouldn't need to breath. A quick trip to Wikipedia tells me eye color is decided in your stroma by two major factors, Melanin and blood vessels. Melanin is the pigment used in the human iris and is what gives us brown eyes, all other eye colors are decided by a lack of melanin. In people with less pigment in their eyes, Rayleigh* scattering (which is why the sky is blue) in their hemoglobin and blood vessels, becomes more important. People with blue eyes have very little melanin, people with green and hazel eyes have slightly more. Therefore having stormlight moving through the blood vessel in your iris could certainly explain a change in color. Though the radiant in Dalinar's vision is described as having unnaturally white but not glowing eyes, so it seems likely that using it does change the eye over time. I would suggest that stormlight slowly destroys pigment but that would just result in blue eyes thanks to scattering, so probably time to just sit back and leave the magic eyes be. *Also Tyndall and Mie scattering but to less effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iris_%28anatomy%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_color

Well if you think about it the majority of the assassinations weren't mentioned in tWoK. Around 24 names on the list and 6 countries left without leaders according to Kaladin. Of that we get three different countries and 9 confirmed targets in tWoK. The King of Jah Keved in Szeths interlude, the Emuli from Kaladin's Storm vision, and a Selay Gerontarch and 6 highprinces from Szeths summary of the list. I'd suggest its placement could have more to do with the importance of Darkness to the second book. If Lift's interlude had come in it's chronological place in tWoK's then Darkness would have been revealed as a much bigger player way too early. Plus for those people with Alcatraz's least favorite habit, who've started reading from the second book, it serves as a nice re-enforcing of 'this assassin in white guy is deadly'.

Aye, Shen was a bit of a surprise standout to me. I'm now really hoping he finds his 'music' in WoR. I wonder if there isn't something cognitive going on with the Parshmen. Everyone views them as property so it reenforces their view of themselves as property. Shen is given a name, possessions, and is thought of as a person by Bridge Four and so he begins to develop a view of himself as a person.

From Kaladin's new Steelhunt chapter:

Hmm your dead right, I think I started and finished that post in two different mind sets. 1. Darkness needs the crime to be unarguably a crime even with outside Royal opinion. i.e. If a King orders a soldier to go to another country and kill, it isn't a crime in the King's mind, it's an act of war. (which doesn't make it a war crime I'm not sure what I was thinking) 2. Darkness can only go off local laws, and can't use or be effected by other nations opinion on the crime or even true guilt. i.e. If I can get the paperwork filled, I can execute him here. My overall jumbled point was supposed to be that we don't know much about how Darkness defines he's 'justice'. However then I found that section in the Lift interlude about, 'subject yourself to their rules' and wrote my ending without changing my beginning. I still stand by the point that any deaths ordered by a King are not crimes in the King's territory, assuming their above the law. Though that certainly wouldn't protect Szeth if he was caught in any one of the places he's committed a crime.

Yes but a criminal offense under which law? I doubt Roshar has an international treaties on war crimes or that most of the countries consider Kings as subjects of their own laws. If the King of Kharbranth doesn't consider it a crime to send an Assassin against his enemies then that assassination wasn't a crime anywhere he makes the law. Whether this immunity extends to the Assassin while he is outside Kharbranth's territory is another matter. Remember Darkness's strange focus on paperwork, it's important to him and he seems to need paperwork specific to the country his target is in. There are so many questions that could be asked about Darkness's twisted sense of 'Justice'. Does he hold people to the law of the country they're currently in or all countries? When a King tries to pardon a person for crimes committed outside their territory does that stop Darkness? If it does, then does that protection end when the person leaves the King's territory? Does the person actually need to be guilty of the crime, or is it enough for them to be declared legally guilty based on false testimony? Who does he get to sign off on his paperwork, that they're willing to execute someone for theft? What if the local government has outlawed capital punishment, not likely on Roshar I know, but what if? I'm not saying this is the reason for him avoiding Szeth, I'm actually very much in favor of it being because Szeth isn't Spren Bonded. I'm just pointing out difficulties Darkness may have with going after people tied to high government positions. His not just seeking any legal justification for the deaths, he is quite insistent on staying within the laws and rule of whichever land he is currently within.

Very true and quite likely, however Darkness also seems to need legal justification for taking down his targets. Anyone like Lift, with contacts within a nation's leadership could very well be a tricky spot for him. Assassination on the orders of a nations ruler isn't really a criminal offense, just another part of war and politics. If you take it all the way back to Shinovar, Szeth's actions are a result of him following the orders and tenants given to him by the leaders of Stone Shamanism, if they represent the leaders of Shinovar then all of Szeth's actions have come about as a result of following his nations orders, just like any other soldier. Of course just because a crime was truly an act of war doesn't stop countries from putting out arrest warrants. And just because the King of Jah Keved pardons you for crimes commited in Alethkar doesn't mean your free to walk the streets of Kholinar without being arrested. We don't really know enough about how Darkness defines 'Justice', its possible Lift's pardon only protects her from crimes committed in Azish, and Darkness could still try to have her extradited to answer from crimes in other countries; not that he'd succeed while the current Prime lives.