Search the Community

So, where do we stand in terms of factions and "free pieces" of note? Things are deliciously complex at the moment. Factions: Davilar's alliance (a few factions within but currently working together) Odium's forces (with a few factions especially across the Fused) Mr T's people in Kharbranth The surviving Listeners and rebel Fused Ishar and his forces The Shin The Ghostbloods What's left of the Sons of Honour The 17th Shard Possibly the Set? Or some other offworlders Each of the clans of Great Spren Nan's Skybreakers Harmony and his forces, potentially Cultivation and The Nightwalker (I wonder who will bond that one?) The Sleepless Pieces: Every Herald is basically a wild card Shallan Vasher Wit Azure (who I am desperate to see more of) Szeth and NB Moash (I think is gonna be increasingly out of Odium's control alla Fain) Rysn Who else am I missing?

So this has been a theme of sorts throughout all of Stormlight, and to a degree the whole Cosmere, but reached a slightly different real-life-applicable context that I think Brandon is trying to frame an unspoken question around. Many Radiant Oaths look at the powerless, be it protecting the weak for the Windrunners, giving a voice to the helpless like the Edgedancers or freeing the subjugated like the Willshapers. Beyond that we've had slavery, indentured servitude, feudalism, class and caste systems and many other forms of subjugation explored in every book. We've had characters find their voice. In this book, letting people have autonomy, making choices you disagree with, is a key lesson. Kal had to learn to do it. Adolin and the Honorspren did with Maya and the Recreance. But in this book, we explored other forms of voicelessness, not "social" though really it's still social, and a look at when it right to live, save, kill or die. 1) Mental health, across the Fused, Kal, his patients, more than ever. The very mentally unwell, whether depressed or schizophrenic or catatonic, in the Alethi society get locked away in the dark because nobody knows how to treat them. 2) Raboniel's daughter, whom she works so hard to euthanise. 3) Moash deciding to mercy kill people, like Bridge 4, to "save them from pain" 4) Heralds more insane than ever, and the question as to whether continuing to live an eternal life is the right thing for a person to endure. 5) Deadeye Spren, who are treated as though utterly dead despite their signs of life, surely an allegory to neurologically and cognitively injured patients? And we see multiple approaches: do you nurture or segregate? And when can you kill out of Mercy? Moash seems obviously wrong, and the view of the Spren about Deadeyes being as good as dead seems wrong but is Raboniel's killing of her daughter good, bad or something debatable?

So, seems like Moash is now blind: "But he couldn't see them. No matter how much Stormlight he was given, his eyes didn't recover. He was blind" Why do you think this happened?