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Imagine that you, yes you little muggle/skaa/non-radiant etc., are standing in front of a suit of shardplate. You are given two weapons: 1) a shardblade and 2) a warhammer. You take the shardblade and swing it repeatedly against the left vambrace of the shardplate until the vambrace shatters. You then take the warhammer and swing it repeatedly against the right vambrace of the shardplate until the vambrace shatters. Did it take the same number of swings or would the shardblade provide a bonus against shardplate? *** edit ***: To be clear I do not mean a warhammer as in the massive weapons wielded by shardplate users but rather a one (or two) handed mace/hammer meant to be wielded by a regular soldier.

So I was reading the coppemind wiki and it said that windrunner's colour of shardplate is blue,and from the books we also see that kaladin's eyes(when he ingests stormlight) and sylblade are blue in color as he is a member of the order of windrunners,and I also noticed the the color of glyph of the windrunners is blue (windrunners obviously have a lot of blue) so my question is do other orders also have their shardplate,shardblade and eye color turn to the color of their order's glyphs? For example,the dustbringer's colour of glyph is red,the truthwatchers is green,the bondsmiths is yellow etc What further makes me think this way is that,kaladin's original eye color is brown,so if ingesting stomlight or bonding a shardblade will make a darkeyes eye color brighten then it would make kaladin's eye color to become very light brown or tan like what happened to moash when he bonded with his shardblade BUT kaladin's eye color did not change to light brown/tan it changed to blue which is the color of the order of windrunners. So will we see dalinar's eye turn to yellow or renarin's to green? OATHBRINGER SPOILER! I just thought I should add this,I read kaldin's sample chapter from book three at tor and in the chapter it is said that if kaladin doesn't ingest stormlight or summons his sylblade for a long time,his eye colour reverts back to dark brown,if he does either of the actions his eye color will start to glow blue again

Weee, random theory time. I've been in the mood for a reread recently, and though I have not yet gotten around to going through WoK and WoR, I have been thinking about a few things that I wanted to keep an eye out for. That carried me through to thinking about the ending of WoR, and the scene where the Stormfather bonds with Dalinar. ...[We don't need to tag WoR spoilers, it being the last released book and all, do we? I would have posted this later, but the quote I was after was actually brought up in another topic by Moogle. In particular, I was focusing on the underlined parts below. And while it is highly likely that I am merely seeing what I wish to see here, I think the wording does leave the Stormfather with some wriggle room, in terms of alternate interpretations. From how I am reading it, there are two possible interpretations, excluding the "I'm not gonna be a Shardblade, deal with it" one. First, the Stormfather could be saying that, if he becomes a Shardblade, it will not be a "normal" variant, and while he can take sword form, it would be his choice, not Dalinar's, though I deem this one somewhat unlikely. Second, a more likely variant, is that his Shardblade form is normal, but again, he will take it on his terms. So I am hoping, though I think it may be unlikely, that we will get another "Stretch forth thy hand" moment, albeit with less awkward Old English, and the full dramatic effect of the Stormfather entering the fray, rather than merely hurling Stormlight from the sidelines. ... It would appear that there is a similar topic in existence, though it has a slightly different spin on it. Not sure if I should have created a new one, or Necro'd the old one, but it is a good time to find out.

If a Full Shardbearer lost both their arms, what would they still be capable of doing with their Shards? Also, would the arms being lost normally vs severed by Shardblade change things? For Plate, obviously they could still wear their Plate and be protected/strengthened by it, but what would happen with the arms & gloves? My best guesses: -They hang there uselessly -They are usable through mental commands (like when Adolin wills a glove to disconnect) -The arms shrink into the shoulder sockets forming a super-dense layer of armor As for the Blade, it could still be summoned, but then what? It appears in the bearer's HAND, which does not exist... Would it appear where their hand should be, and then immediately evaporate? Appear touching the bearer's shoulder, then fall to the ground? Or if the Plate arms are present, would the Blade appear in the Plate hand?

SPOILERS for Words of Radiance After Kaladin defeats Szeth he takes possession of the honorblade Szeth used so my question is can Kaladin bound to it while he is bounded to Syl? This might have been answered somewhere before, but I don't know where to find it and am interested to hear what people have to say on it.

Ok in the Prelude to TWoK Talenel (Taln, Talenelat, Talenel'Elin) dies and his honorblade vanishes, so that there are only 9 left in the circle. In Words of Radiance, doesn't Dalinar bond Talenel'Elin's honorblade? And if Dalinar DID bond the honorblade, as WoR mentions in multiple places that Dalinar had bonded "that madman's blade". Why, at the end of WoR, does the blade that Dalinar has bonded start screaming inside his head after Dalinar swears his second oath, and The Stormfather refer to the blade as a "monstrosity"?? Especially if Szeth had an honorblade, and it did not scream in Kaladin's mind.

I was aimlessly wandering through the 17th shard and The Coppermind, and I started delving into the Derethi Church. I noticed at the end of the Coppermind article it mention a mythical sword. Link here. "The original Wyrn had a mythical sword named Gretgor" "Gretgor is a mythological weapon used by the first Wyrn, founder of the Fjordell Empire." This is the first time I can remember hearing about this sword/weapon. We know that Elantris is chronologically first, in regards to the currently published cosmere works. Could this mythical sword/weapon be somehow related to shardblades, or awakened swords (nightblood)? Is this mythical sword the idea/seed for how nightblood came to be? I have no more information on Gretgor, so I am interested to see what people think, or if people have any other information regarding this weapon.

So, I've seen a lot of discussion about whether or not Adolin would end up being a Radiant. At first I thought that would be just a little too cliche, especially with the rest of his family, but then I started thinking about the Shardblade he already has, and I started wondering... would it be possible for Adolin to actually bring back the spren in his Shardblade? He already shows it an incredible amount of respect, and thinks of it to some degree as an actual, sentient being (talking to it before duels, refusing to give it a new name, etc). I know Kaladin and Syl have already talked about whether or not you could bring back a "dead" spren, but as far as I could tell, nothing conclusive was decided. My brother is convinced I'm wrong, but as I'm currently borrowing his copies of the books he can't disprove me. Thoughts?

So: Are Honorblades a type of Fabrial? First a quote: http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=1052 So. What we know. The Heralds were given Honorblades. These blades allow them to do special things (surges & absorb stormlight). Later, Spren bonded with Humans, and are able to emulate Honorblades. When one of these Spren "dies" it has the physical form of an ShardBlade (mimicking an honorblade). There are other quotes saying that the Heralds can only do surgebinding with the HonorBlade but have other "gifts" as well. Speculation (Honorblades & old-style Fabrials): 1) Honor created (or had someone create, or created with the help of Cultivation) 10 Super-Fabrials, the Honorblades, gave these to the Heralds, along with some additional investment to the Heralds themselves. 2) The creation of (old-style) Fabrials has something to do with Spren. Changing a spren to, or forging a spren with an object (metal?). I cannot speculate here. We have two types of examples in the Cosmere. Investiture can have a solid form (metal) - so possibly, a spren + solid investiture could be shaped into a sword. We also have an example of a normal sword imbued with "breath" that creates a "type of Shardblade". 3) Other Fabrials were created in a similar way (regrowth, soulcasting, etc). basically, small scale, single surge human copies of the Honorblades (not sure if the shape is important for old-style fabrials). 4) Holding an Honorblade gives a user an imperfect bond with the Spren within the Honorblade. The holder can absorb stormlight to power the surges, but is not efficient. The stormlight holding ability is not part of the lesser man-made old-style fabrials, which require inset stones as a powersource, (or power from someone with a spren-bond, that is, the surgebinder is the power source, rather than a gem). That is, the man-made fabrials do not provide a bond with the holder, which allows holding stormlight -- though something odd is happening to those folks who use a Soulcaster too often. 5) The weak bond to the Honorblade spren may or may not allow small changes to the Honorblade's appearance over time. 6) Spren gain consciousness over time. I believe that is stated in the books. I assume the Honorblade is created with a pre-conscious/unthinking/primordial radiant spren Speculation (Shardblades & new-style Fabrials) 1) Mature Spren of the same type used for the Honorblades bonded with normal Humans, and learned they could mimic the Honorblades (that is, are able to manifest in the physical world as a blade, and provide surgebinding - this may imply that the Honorblades are simply bound Spren, not swords imbued with spren). 2) Because the bond is strong, the physical manifestation is more malleable (can be sword, spear, knife, etc), and Stormlight use is more efficient (unlike the weaker version of the bond with an Honorblade). The "Dead" spren manifest as a sword, because that is how they see themselves (mimicking the Honorblades). However, they can also change slightly over time, depending on their wielder. The "dead"-spren bond must be even weaker than that with Honorblades, since the wielder cannot hold stormlight. 3) I am categorizing New-style Fabrials with the Knights Radiant, because, instead of the spren manifesting as the Fabrial, a spren is captured in a gem, and the fabrial is a separate component (like the KR), making use of the spren's innate investiture. Now. using all this speculation, I can infer that Shardplate is an Old-style Fabrial (made up of spren, the same way old Fabrials were made) and requires either a Radiant, or gems to provide power. Further, that the original KRs (or a specific subset of them) knew how to (were able to) make old style Fabrials, since the KRs have plate, and access to old-style fabrials (in the visions). Other posts that touch on this topic: http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/7647-spren-splinters-old-style-fabrials http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/6819-the-origin-of-shardplate/

I apologize if this has already been answered somewhere else. I searched and couldn't find any answers. In both Way of Kings and Words of Radiance, Shallan deliberately uses the ten heartbeats of summoning a Shardblade when summoning Pattern. However, we know this is not necessary when the Knight's spren is alive, as Pattern obviously is. I feel like there's some significance to why she makes it the full ten heartbeats. Maybe in her mind summoning Pattern immediately would be the same as admitting to herself that everything she tries to avoid thinking about in her childhood actually happened. That doesn't seem quite right to me though, so if anyone knows why, or has any thoughts on it, I would appreciate the input.

In his blog post here, Brandon is talking about the change he made to a scene at the end of Words of Radiance involved the confrontation between Szeth and Kaladin. In summary, he says that he made it so that the storm killed Szeth, and not Kaladin. Or more importantly, not Kaladin's Shardblade. I'm not sure if this has been discussed here before (I couldn't find it) so I'm just going to open a discussion about this particular quote from the paragraph explaining this. Source *emphasis added* What does this mean? Which Shardblade is he talking about here? Is it that Kaladin's Shardblade being living allows him to decide if the soul is taken, or give it back, or? Or is it Darkness' living Shardblade that is used to resuscitate Szeth after he falls from the sky? Or is it Szeth who is given/gains a living Shardblade of his own, which heals his own soul (this sounds the more likely meaning Brandon was going for)? I'm just curious as to what you guys think are the connotations of such a thing, which Brandon says is an 'important plot point for the series'?

I have been wondering if a requirement to resurrect a Shardblade if you are not its original bonded knight would be having the matching Shardplate. If the plate has part of the spiritweb of the spren that created the blade, then someone possessing a matched set and living by the right ideals may be able to bootstrap a bond with the dead spren in order to revive it. Which makes me wonder if the style of Adolin's plate matches that of his blade.

Just a question. I know that Nightblood is an optimistic killing sword, but I haven't read THAT much of Warbreaker. So no spoilers please.

In the Goodreads interview discussed here, Brandon provided the following answer: The quote from the interview database says that there were three different kinds of Shardblades in tWoK. Did we see Nightblood in tWok? Are kinds different from types? If not, then have we learned anything about the three kinds, or were we just totally trolled? I realize that much of the interest in the original quote was about figuring out whether Szeth had Jezrien's Honorblade, but here are the possibilities we've come up with for the meaning of the original quote: Live sprenblade, dead sprenblade, Honorblade; pro: fits what we know; con: his answer at Goodreads is misleading or uncomprehending of the original quote. Sprenblade, Honorblade, Awakened blade; pro: Goodreads quote works with original hint. If Wit's sword is an awakened blade like Nightblood or yet another kind of Shardblade we are getting actual information. con: Since Nale is not described as having a blade, then we haven't "seen" Nightblood (as Moogle suggests) and there is no evidence to support the notion that Wit's sword is special except Wit's magical acquisitiveness. Honorblade in muggle hands, Honorblade in Herald hands, sprenblade; pro: fits what we know; con: Goodreads answer is not helpful, Is a blade a different kind if wielded by a different person? Edit: Original quote says kinds, not types, list possibilities from thread

He has a shardblade! I've had my profile picture since I signed up to the forum, and I did not put it together until now. He might even be a proper Knight Radiant - he speaks an ideal/reaches a personal realisation, then summons a blade and goes all Skybreaker on everyone! His oath moments are centred around either love or self-actualisation, generally in the context of relationships, so he might be the opposite of a Skybreaker. Maybe a Truthwatcher, since he spends so much of the story completely misguided about his own importance/effect on others, then gains his stormlight (coin?) processing abilities when he begins to approach a very important truth... I don't think there's any spoilers in there, but I'm used to posting in the Cosmere forums, so let me know if there's anything amiss.

There has been something bothering me about the manner in which shardblades kill their victims. They do not affect the physical being of living things, but instead, they directly target and kill the soul. Given that shardblades can be considered to be a physical manifestation of spren, it would seem to me that they are cognitive in nature. This would seem to make their logical target the cognitive identity of their victims. Since all three apects: cognitive, physical, and spiritual are needed for life in the cosmere, this would be just as effective a way of killing in my mind. The question that arises, then, is why do they target the spiritual aspect? It could be that once the cognitive is killed, there is nothing holding the soul in place. However, when Szeth is brought back, Nalan seemed to imply that the mind was the last thing to survive, so it doesn't seem that the cognitive was targeted at all. Any thoughts, speculation, WoB on this?

I got the impression that the shardblade that Amaram shows to Shallan (who appears as a messenger boy) is not the one that Kaladin got for him, but is, a second, newer one. Amaram says, "The blade is still new to me. I find excuses to summon it." This is consistent with Amaram's story that he got the blade only four months ago from an assasin that was sent after him (Helaran). I do audiobooks, so it's hard for me to go back and find and compare the right supporting quotes. But I figure this might be proved or disproved by comparing the description of the shardblade Kaladin sees on the battlefield to the one that Amaram shows to Shallan. Thoughts?

So, given that the spren can change their shape and form, I thought it might be fun to try and decide on what sort of weapon might be the most devastating in battle. Personally, I think some sort of Shardic Rope dart in a skilled hand would be about unstoppable, even if it's only the tip that could go through someone. The sheer flexibility of the rope dart, and the difficulty you face trying to block one, already makes it a difficult weapon to face off against, but add in the 'cuts through anything' effect, and you have yourself one heck of a game changer on a crowded battle field. Any other thoughts on weapons made way more scary by spren?

Hear me out here: At the beginning of WoK during Gavilar's assassination, Szeth notes that he has a choice between surgebinding and shardplate, that something about shardplate prevents/interferes with his surgebinding (likely specific to surgebinding granted by an honorblade as we see other KR surgebinding in shardplate in Dalinar's flashbacks). Gavilar always wore his plate while wielding his blade (on screen at least) and so would not be able to surgebind. I think it's likely he didn't even realize exactly what he had given the apparent conflict between plate and honorblade-surgebinding. Also, when on the practice grounds training under Zahel in WoR, Kaladin hears no screams while holding and practicing with a blade similar in description to Gavilar's old blade. We know Kaladin is between oaths 2 and 3 at this point, and that he hasn't progressed any further during the full disadvantaged duel in which he first heard the screams when touching an enemy shardbearer's blade - so it's unlikely that during training he would not have heard screams if he were using a deadspren-blade. He also cannot use Syl as a blade yet as he hasn't given the third oath. This leaves only 2 options - he's using someone else's KR spren-blade (though this seems doubtful as I can't see a KR leaving their spren around a training ground for others to use as practice) OR he's using an honorblade. Thoughts? Contradictions? Figgledegrak?

Whose Blade did Dalinar bond in WoR? I think it is unlikely that he did in fact bond Talenel'Elin's Honorblade as we were led to believe. We know that at the end of TWoK Hoid shows up to meet Talenel'Elin. I think it's likely that at this point Hoid swapped the Honorblade for a regular Shardblade. The only reason I say this is because when Dalinar bonds with The Stormfather he has to get rid of his blade and after summoning it hears the screams. If it really were Talenel'Elin's blade then there would be no Spren involved and no screaming. I guess my question really is, what happened to Talenel'Elin's Honorblade and why was it taken? Did Hoid take it? If so, then why? ~sbi