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Oltux72

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Posts posted by Oltux72

  1. 9 hours ago, Harrycrapper said:

    They knew that Kelek had knowledge of what Gavilar was doing. They likely didn't want to experiment on him(or it wasn't their primary goal at least), they wanted his knowledge on Gavilar's experiments.

    This is true, but turns the Ghostbloods into foolish morons.

    Kalak wants to get away. He would be overjoyed to cooperate. You send him a Seon and he would know that you are not talking crap. But no, you want an irreplacable asset to ram a dagger into his back. What is wrong with you? If you were Iyatil and Mraize suggested that to you, you'd ask him to explain and then most likely slit his throat. And then resign. You'd know that you have lost it.
    That is wildly inconsistent with the level of competence the Ghostbloods have been displaying. We must rule that out.

    1 hour ago, Isilel said:

    Investiture isn't supposed to be able to leave it, so it shouldn't have mattered that his influx of it was capped. But maybe someone sabotaged the stone - or cutting Jezrien off from the Oathpact allowed him to choose death, as he had been unable to before. 

    The raw Investiture may still be there. The pattern that was Jezrien is gone.

    1 hour ago, Isilel said:

    Do the Ghostbloods want BAM as a portable source of voidlight?

    Do you build a nuclear reactor just to heat your swimming pool? It would work. Every Regal can produce voidlight.

    1 hour ago, Isilel said:

    Do they think that she could allow them to manipulate Connections of Rosharan investiture so that it can be easily transported?

    You have Connector ferings, if you are from Scadrial. Even compounders.

    1 hour ago, Isilel said:

    Why didn't they just try to trade information with Kalak - he wants to get out of Rosharan system as badly as Thaidakar wants off Scadrial, why not pool resources instead of hunting him down? This whole operation seems severely bungled to me. I hope that Mraize gets his come-uppance not from the heroes, but from his superiors.

    Right, that would be a monumental blunder. But not just from Mraize. This operation needed:

    • a Seon
    • Shallan
    • a god metal
    • a strange kind of fabrial
    • a weapons test

    And here the demands get outrageous. You cannot just send this thing and hope and pray (to whom?) that it work. Even if you have traded or captured this dagger from Odium's forces you cannot know whether you have been duped or acquired damaged goods or are lacking the proper operating procedures. You have to test. Just imagine you got Shallan into Lasting Integrity, she stabbed him and he just screamed: Ouch!. Stop this, you stupid girl. Guards! - or, worse by far - just died and went to Damnation
    And it gets worse. Whom do you test on? Kelsier, a Returned or a Fused. No of these options is good. If Mraize can just sign off on them, the Ghostbloods need to change their operating procedures quickly.

    Something is fishy here.

    56 minutes ago, Kingsdaughter613 said:

    This. This is EXACTLY what I think is going to happen. Mraize completely messed up.

    I suspect this whole thing was a test for him - and he just failed. Badly.

    That goes higher up tthan just Mraize. There is some deep deception going on here. If I am paranoid enough, I would go and check the god metal in that dagger extremely thoroughly. Want to bet that it is Cultivationium? We are maybe two layers of secrets away from understanding.

     

     

  2. 1 hour ago, Kingsdaughter613 said:

    First off: I accidentally discovered a WoB that indicated that SA was supposed to overlap MB era 3 originally. And he’s been vague on the timelines because he had to move W&W to the time gap and Era 3 even further due to things going on in the background. I think we now can guess at what those ‘background’ things are. And with those ‘background things’ hitting the forefront, this timeline needs to be fixed.

    OK.

    1 hour ago, Kingsdaughter613 said:

    If I was reading this as a stand-alone, I would not expect the first half to end with a major antagonist from a major character’s plot going unseen on page. I’d expect at least one appearance, probably near the end. Possibly because SHALLAN travels to Scadrial.

    She cannot. Mraize also explains that Shallan is trapped in the Rosharan system. Radiant says that a prison of three planets is large enough. So the plot is tight.

    I must admit that I thought that we were talking plot issues here, though you never stated it. Are we discussing strictly plot, or more literary issues of pacing and meeting expectrations?

    1 hour ago, Kingsdaughter613 said:

    As long as Thaidakar was almost entirely in the background, I expected him to be a mystery revealed near the end of the first half, to be expanded upon in the second. But with as often as he’s been brought up in this book - and by whom - it would feel really weird to me if we didn’t meet him.

    Well, this book has dropped names without end. And that is where I find myself out of objectivity. I know who Kelsier is. And I cannot switch that off. The sheer number of names and concepts dropped on a reader is huge. And I find myself unable to say whether to a reader limited to the Stormlight Archive it would be more urgent to get to see

    • who is this Thaidakar guy
    • lets find this Nalthis place where they can make Shard Blades that we keep hearing from since Oathbringer
    • an alien Spren! - they must have alien Surges! Priority A1+
    • measuring sand - a world of advanced Investiture technologies. We can finally understand what we are doing,
    • We have learned that obscuring Odium's future sight is even more imporrtant than we thought. We need to capture this Riino fellow and duplicate his device.

     

  3. I am afraid this is a difficult matter, so this will be long.

    24 minutes ago, Kingsdaughter613 said:

    No, I think he intended to write TLM first BEFORE this reveal, but ran out of time.

    Reasonable.

    24 minutes ago, Kingsdaughter613 said:

    Now he has to write TLM, where Kell will almost certainly show up, with us knowing much more of what the Survivor’s up to than we did.

    Right. But we would eventually learn it, wouldn't we? Thaidakar really hasn't done anything except order Kalak to be knifed. The basic order of TLM and SA5 has not been changed. You are merely saying that Brandon switched from

    TLM -> RoW -> SA 5 to
    RoW -> TLM -> Sa 5, right?

    24 minutes ago, Kingsdaughter613 said:

    Before this Brandon could be a lot more fluid with that appearance, because he could be more fluid on whether to drop the Thaidakar reveal in book 4 or 5. By putting it here, he has to be careful that nothing said, done or shown contradicts SA events involving that character.

    Well, no. That would suck the same, only later. TLM and SA 5 have to be consistent, no matter what order books are written.

    24 minutes ago, Kingsdaughter613 said:

    Also, he may have made the decision to put the reveal here because he’s changed the role Thaidakar and the GBs are going to play in book 5. The way this book ends indicates that something will go down with them in the next book. Wit certainly thought it was important enough to warn Jasnah about.

    Shallan has broken up with the Ghostbloods, yes. So the Ghostbloods will retaliate.

    24 minutes ago, Kingsdaughter613 said:

    Per WoB, Kell is not supposed to appear in SA.

    He won't. He cannot. We are told that he cannot leave home. Shallan is told that. She will expect revenge and so will the readers, but not immediately in person.

    24 minutes ago, Kingsdaughter613 said:

    After this book, if I was a SA only reader, I’d be shocked if Thaidakar didn’t show up in the final book. Pretend you don’t know who Thaidakar is.

    I'd expect him to send assassins. I know that he cannot come. I also know that he is on another planet. Travel between planets is done at a speed determined by pack animals or walking speed. Unless you wanted another time jump, I should not expect anybody from any place outside the Rosharan system, not for months.

    Are you saying that an average reader will not notice those clues needed to do the calculations?

    24 minutes ago, Kingsdaughter613 said:

    You’ve never read Mistborn. Of COURSE you expect this mysterious man to show up.

    After being told that he cannot leave home and that being the reason for Shallan's mission in the first place?

     

  4. 3 minutes ago, Kingsdaughter613 said:

    As I noted previously: Brandon has to nail down exactly when W&W takes place so as to avoid SA timeline conflicts. That’s the most likely source of the aforementioned issue.

    While that is vertainly true, why is it new and conditional on Rhythm of War? Or are you saying that Brandon decided only when writing Rhythm of War who Thaidakar is?

  5. 1 hour ago, ftl said:

    But the bits with Hoid looking down at the coin could indicate that he's figured out that his memories have been messed with, and in fact the whole prelude about lying to people by making them think you've lived a thousand lives (and the bits about the coin tricks) could indicate that Hoid knew his Breath-memories were a red herring, and were a successful ruse.

    It does not end there. The memory alteration may not be the true attack. Taravangian may place a memory bomb to hide that he needed to copy the memories. And he may genuinely care for the answer to the question whom the coaltion expect him to send and he had to ask the question to be sure that Hoid considered the question and remembered the answer.

  6. On 21.11.2020 at 6:43 AM, IntentAwesome said:

    In a recent live stream, Brandon said that something he did in Rhythm of War would be a headache for himself and Karen. The mosT obvious headache would be squeezing 1200 pages of plot into just 10 days.

    Well, Brandon and the people at Dragonsteel are hardly idiots. The conclusion that time would be short if the duell is supposed to be at the end of SA 5 is blindingly obvious. And changing the ten into a 50 or 81 and give some numerological hint about 9 * 9 would have been simple and without consequences. If you have to prepare for combat the fate of a planet hinges upon even a hundred days would feel short.
    In fact the obvious problem may exist. He has spoiled that SA 5 won't end with the duell. But why would that bother Karen?

    So I doubt it is that. It has to be something either hard to do without or something seemingly inconsequential. For example killing Teft. If he had plans for him in SA 5, well, that's it. But somebody had to die.

    22 hours ago, ftl said:

    ...but then ROdium went and got himself killed. And now TOdium doesn't want to play to "limit his losses" - he wants to win.

    Yes. But that plot twist must be old. In fact it most likely ancient. We now know why Nightblood has been on Roshar. We know why Cultivation changed Taravangian.. This feels like a very basic plot point.

    22 hours ago, ftl said:

    So the Radiants are going to actually have to push for the whole victory instead of getting the easier way out with a Champion.

    No. They can. They do not need to. They now have a multitude of options. They just do not know that.

  7. 3 hours ago, kaellok said:

    10,000% agree with the bolded part.  Infinity% disagree with the italicized.  You can have family without children; you can have children without having family.  People should not have children in order to make a family, they should make a family in order to have children. 

    I am afraid I will have to point out that the definition of family is highly a variable cultural feature. Adolin is a member of a preindustrial warrior culture. They happen to be monogamous. But that they see a family without children as complete is quite unlikely. And his views are relevant discussing his needs.

     

  8. 45 minutes ago, Prymalfire said:

    We have no reason to think Vorinism holds sway over any of the Heralds. They predate it, and Ishar in particular considers himself God, he wouldn't care about any prohibitions.

    But the arrow of causalty can run the other way. Vorinism bans foretelling the future bevause the Heralds hate it.

  9. 17 hours ago, Use the Falchion said:

    As my Jasnadin ship sinks in the flames of her relationship with Wit (ruining TWO potential ships I had for the Alethi Queen),

    I doubt it will last. As you said, she is the Alethi Queen. Hoid, however, is the bearer of the First Gem and so on. Both of them are guided ultimately by duty over personal interests. Jasnah likely even more than Hoid. If Roshar and her family clash with Hoid's plans, she will pick the former.

  10. 1 minute ago, Jescape said:

    Does anyone else think that the way Ishar fought was very similar to the way that people burning Atium do? Given that I doubt he has Atium, could he be using fortune somehow?

    For one thing, a few thousand years of experience and a body magically designed to be a fighting machine helps.

    We can speculate that you, if you strengthen your bonds to somebody else hard enough, you will learn something from them. Using Fortune would seem to be as un-Vorin as you can get.

     

  11. 9 hours ago, IcaroRibeiro said:

    I also don't like the Pursuer

    What a pointless character. Sometimes I feel Kaladin is favorite Sanderson character and he feels he need to always give a plot of many chapters and significance to him. I thought Adolin was going to be the pointless POV of this book, but honestly Kaladin is by far the character with the weakest storyline in the series in both Oathbringer and Rhythm of War

    True. Unless you needed a trigger for Kaladin's little decapitation trip. Which was cool. But there is the mystery of his eyes. We may just have seen preparation for book#5.

    9 hours ago, IcaroRibeiro said:

    Sanderson now set him up for an even more stupid plot (helping Ishar mental healthy? Wtf). I also don't like the prospect of him joining Szeth in his pilgrimage, just doesn't make any sense for me.

    We will have to see. Rhythm of War cannot be fully understood as an independent book.

     

  12. Just now, Innovation said:

    I agree. She has access to connection. Probably a Ferring but she could be a full Feruchemist. 

    Indeed. But if she can manipulate Connection, you cannot draw conclusions from her relation to Gavilar. She can cause him to like and trust her by Feruchemy.

  13. 26 minutes ago, Clarity-Art said:

    Harmony describes Trell's influence as a red mist surrounding Scandrial. Axindweth could be part of a precursor organization to the Set on Scandrial, or she could be something entirely different, as you stated.

    (Scadrial)

    Spoiler

    So the Set is worried upon Scadrial technology going out of control due to technology, but they are helping to set free Odium?

     

    26 minutes ago, Clarity-Art said:

    Either way, she’s up to no good.

    No, I am sorry, but you cannot reduce the Stormlight Archive, very few things in the Cosmere indeed, into a simple good versus evil. People do not worldhop just to be evil. They need to have a motivation. She doesn't even have a mustache to twirl and adore her own eviltude.

  14. 1 hour ago, Clarity-Art said:

    Because Axindweth occupied a position close to Gavilar, as shown in Venli and Eshonai's flashbacks, I believe she must've been part of the Sons of Honor.

    Given whom we know Restares to e, that is highly problematic.

    1 hour ago, Clarity-Art said:

    Even if she wasn't a part of the Sons of Honor, her interactions with Gavilar indicate a kind of familiarity that no average attendant could reach.

    She is a Feruchemist.

    1 hour ago, Clarity-Art said:

    The man who discovered her in the palace, the steward Gereh, is also Terris and a Feruchemist. I think he could easily be an agent of Harmony, or associated with an organization of the Terris that's dedicated to preserving secrets. My personal theory is that he's associated with the Worldbringers, who have ties to the Rosharan Worldsingers through Hoid. It would be plausible for individuals in both groups to be Cosmere aware, given that Hoid played a part along the way. 

    There is a large number of suggestions. The problem is that I mostly have negative comments.

    Kalak being Restares means that the Sons of Honor are a sham. Why would Kalak have a voidspren delivered? Furthermore, how come the Sons of Honor all of a sudden are worldhoppers?
    Now, assuming her to be a Ghostblood also is highly problematic. A Ghostblood suddenly fleeing off-world for a minor issue? That makes very little sense. They have safe houses on Roshar aplenty.
    Trell (assuming Trell is not Odium) is also problematic. What is in for him? Why do Odium's dirty work?

    I must conclude that she is a member of a group not known to us.

  15. 2 hours ago, Czernobog said:

    Raboniel referred to the metal as such. Unreliable narrator seems unlikely in this case, to me. 

    Their dagger. That tells us nothing about the Ghostblood's dagger.

    1 hour ago, Harrycrapper said:

    I haven't seen it said here so I figure I'll point it out. The Ghostbloods wanted to capture Kelek to interrogate him. They never said that they'd bring him off world to have Kelsier talk to him. They wanted to interrogate him to figure out how Gavilar was moving Voidlight/Voidspren off Braize as we saw in the prologue, that's the secret they're after. I know he hadn't yet figured out how to get a Herald/spren/Investiture out of the system, but Gaviliar seemed to think he was on track to figuring that out.

    Still. Kelsier has a body. Why Kalak? Why not just kidnap a Fused?

  16. 2 hours ago, bmcclure7 said:

     No, the rules were quite explicit " to the death " if Dalinar forfeits  He has create a circumstance not covered within the contract not a loss but not a win. 

    Like killing your opponent with a suicide attack. You are both dead. The duell is over. But there is no winner.

  17. 7 minutes ago, Jasha said:

     My theory is that Cultivation, in addition to preparing Taravangian to take up Odium (confirmed) and Dalinar to take up Honor (suspected), is also preparing Lift to be her own successor.

    Then she should have attacked Odium at the moment he got transferred. And if she wanted to retire, why replace a damaged, stupid vessel with a brilliant one for her successor to deal with and fail from?

  18. This scene has many implications, but let's center on one. What did he pay with?

    • It is valuable
    • It is rare
    • Raboniel recognised it
    • It is small enough to fit into a bag
    • It clincked

    Based on who paid and what he soiled his pants with, I am going to say: aethers

    What do you think?

  19. On 20.11.2020 at 0:09 AM, Kingsdaughter613 said:

    For all we know, he has. It may not have worked, or he may need someone more like himself.

    I hope for his sake that he is not locked up in a gem stone. And even so, how would they get that gem to him? The Ghostbloods know that Stormlight won't work. The likeliest outcome of doing this to a Herald or Fused in a gem is you standing somewhere between the worlds and pulling on a gem that won't budge.

    7 minutes ago, Isilel said:

     Kalak thinks that it was the Ghostbloods who killed Jezrien, but we know that it was Moash at the behest of the Fused. So, how did the Ghostbloods get the rare raysium dagger?

    Are we sure it was Raysium? In fact, it would be odd for Odium only specifically to have a metal with those properties. If I had to guess I would suspect to Ghostbloods' dagger to be made with Atium.

    7 minutes ago, Isilel said:

    For that matter, can it be that the Ghostbloods were the ones who designed the knives and shared this technology with the Fused in exchange for getting trapped Herald souls, which they promised to take off-world, i.e. "somewhere safe" per Raboniel?

    When Mraize and Raboniel negotiated it really did not sound like an existing friendly relationship.

    7 minutes ago, Isilel said:

    I kinda wonder about this. It is up to Sanderson, of course, but the Heralds did channel enormous amounts of investiture in the past, due to inefficency of the Honorblades and their direct tap to Honor, and if that was not enough to make them properly persistent cognitive shadows without the Oathpact,

    Channeling does not work. You have to hold it.

     

  20. 4 hours ago, Seloun said:

    An interesting passage from TWoK:

    (emphasis mine)

    Probably a coincidence, but the wording is suspiciously similar to what Rayse!Odium uses. So not sending a champion (or being delayed) is definitely a reason for forfeiture; perhaps Taravangian has a plan for starting something that would require Dalinar to be somewhere else (forcing a different champion, or forfeit).

    True, but wouldn't Dalinar designate a second in line? He is a military officer with decades of campaigning behind him.

    We have three clues

    • what we know about the agreement itself
    • Taravangian asking Hoid, whom he expects Odium to nominate
    • Odium running an urgent test on Lezian
    11 hours ago, kaellok said:

    Ulim is a spren of Odium.  Ulim absolutely tricks many of the Listeners into sacrificing themselves so that they Fused can be born.  Words like "You'll have a form of power" that are technically true, but violate the Intent egregiously.

    Yes, the problem is not tricking your enemy, but breaking your word about your own actions resulting from an agreement

    13 hours ago, Q10fanatic said:

    Dalinar should just pick a Sleepless. Can't be killed, can just shove an army of bugs at Odium's champion until they fall off the edge of Urithiru.

    .We may speculate that the weapons test El ran was part of a crash project to find anti-Investiture designed for exactly that eventuality.

    19 hours ago, Jaconis said:

    This doesn’t fit with the rest of the context when the loophole is discussed, which is that it sets up a situation that, win or lose, you win. This would be better though. Guaranteed win for Odium. 

    Right, so I think the best clue was - I think - Taravangian's question to Odium. It tells us two things.

    1. He is expecting the duell to at least get very close to starting - it would be pointless to ask that question if he were concentrating on finding a way to pressure Dalinar into calling the whole thing off days before the tournament or wanted to kill Dalinar in the next few days
    2. I think we can safely assume that Taravangian does not need Hoid's sincere advise. He wants to know which enemy they are preparing against. That seems to indicate that he does not believe that Dalinar will give battle in person.

    Based on that I think he is speculating on a draw based on both champions dieing and is working on setting up weapons for several adversaries. But I admit that this is based on very thin ice. I would bet only a trivial amount of money on it.

  21. 17 hours ago, Child of Hodor said:

    Rayse + Odium since Odium is trying to escape Rayse during RoW (the light that seems to be trying to escape his skin) and  talks to Tarvangian after rayse dies asking Mr. T to take Odium and telling him he’s perfect. 

    Isn't killing a hated enemy the point Vessel and Shard should be closest in alignment about?

    And a second point. If Odium was alone and suffered a split personality, why did he win in a match of one against two?

     

  22. 18 hours ago, Sparks said:

    And sure, Adolin understands on some level that Odium and Nergaoul have been corrupting Dalinar for decades, which influenced Dalinar's decisions.  But the wound is fresh and Adolin is going to need a lot of healing to come to terms with it.

    He and his father don't match that much. At the very core the man would like to create. It peeked out when he got out that designed uniform. He chose the form of combat that is most like an art form. His father does fundamentally not understand his sons. Renarin likely does not mind, as nobody understands him. But Adolin does mind.

    And then you see him disappointed in not becoming Radiant. Which is not a strange idea. Even Kaladin wonders. And the reason is obvious: Mayalaran
    He could cast her aside. Abandon a friend. What is not to be done. Adolin is an Alethi man in that regard. You do not abandon a friend. Period. And so his father taught him. Yet the same father tells him to man up and get a spren.
    That is different from earlier conflicts. When they clashed about the vision, Dalinar chaffed, but he basically approved. His sonn did his duty. A disagreeable, cruel duty, but duty. When they conflicted about Sadeas, Adolin was vindicated. When he killed Sadeas, basic Alethi mores backed him up. He killed an enemy. You may quibble about methods and circumstances, but the basic act is laudable.
    Yet now his wife is wearing the takama in their marriage (well, the Veden version thereof)

    I have to reject the idea that a new wound was hewn that just needs time to heal. Things are actively worsening between him and his father. And making him a High Prince of a realm existing only on paper and in exile does not really help. His cousing putting an axe at the roots of aristocracy does not help either.

    His future? Obviously it depends on external factors. It is quite possible that Dalinar will die in a week. (Ironic that his future is foremost defined by his father's survival). In that case all bets are off.
    The man needs a family, meaning children. Secondly spatial distance from his father. It would be best for him to take an ambassadorship or go exploring. He is uniquely suited for that among the Kholin family.

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