[OB] Oathbringer Prologue now on Tor.com

[ScavellTane]

8 hours ago, Nathrangking said:

It may have nothing to do with "seeing the light". It can be seriously asked how much did Gavilar actually love Dalinar? To my mind he saw him at most as a means to an end. Dalinar fought his wars and made it possible for him to further his goals. He may have given the sphere away simply to prevent Dalinar from figuring out what he had  been doing. His last moments may well have been spent getting rid of the evidence of his actions. As for his concern for his toadies he may well not have been concerned either because he thought that the veil of secrecy would never be lifted or perhaps he simply felt that Dalinar on his own could not defeat his cabal.

 

It just might simply be that the Parshendi sent someone to kill him. It might have caused him to rethink his course of action.

[Pattern]

4 hours ago, Amanuensis said:

do we have any previous hint at Taravangian being present at Gavilar's assassination?

Yes, in the end of Interlude 14 - Taravangian in WoR (loc. 17499 in Kindle edition):
"That was, at least, what the visions had proclaimed. Visions Gavilar had confided in him six years ago, the night of the Alethi king's death. Gavilar had seen visions of the Almighty, who was also now dead, and of a coming storm.

This not only shows that Taravangian had been present, but also that he belonged to Gavilar's inner circle of confidants (the Sons of Honor ?). In the prologue he is almost certainly the old man in robes. It also hintes that Gavilar's visions were similar to Dalinar's.

11 hours ago, Calderis said:

The Parshendi never saw Szeth after the assassination. In book, Szeth thinks about how he hid the sphere somewhere in Jah Keved 

That is a second sphere, not the one Gavilar gave to Eshonai (at least in a reading Gavilar said something like "take this, I have another one" to Eshonai). Now comes the question to mind: How many spheres filled with voidlight - or captured voidspren - are there?

Edited August 23, 2017 by Pattern

[zebobes]

*attunes questioning*

Something just occurred to me: has anyone noticed if there are a limited number of rhythms that the Parshendi can attune to, or is there an unlimited number of rhythms, just like there are an unlimited variation of emotions? Or is each rhythm connected with a surge, or a Spren, or an Unmade, the Ten fools, or something along those lines? 

[Pattern]

5 minutes ago, zebobes said:

*attunes questioning*

Something just occurred to me: has anyone noticed if there are a limited number of rhythms that the Parshendi can attune to, or is there an unlimited number of rhythms, just like there are an unlimited variation of emotions? Or is each rhythm connected with a surge, or a Spren, or an Unmade, the Ten fools, or something along those lines? 

The Rhythms seem to be different in stormform. The old rhythms become warped by Odiums influence. I don't know whether the rhythms vary in each form though. I cannot remember something like this being mentioned. So the rhythm of Amusement should be the same for every form not being a form of power. In a form of power this would become the rhythm of Redicule - or the Listener would attune to Redicule instead of Amusement in a similar situation.

We don't really know much about the variations of the listener rhythms. For example what would still be counted as the same rhythm? You could vary the speed of a rhythm, still calling the rhythm the same - or you could say this was another rhythm (e.g slow: Rhythm of Fear, fast: Rhythm of Terror). Here it needs to be clarified how much the definition of rhythm in music theory can be applied to the Listener rhythms.

Interesting to hear would be the realization of the Rhythms in the audiobooks. Is there a difference in the speaking rhythms of the Parshendi lines while they are attuned to different emotions?

[Amanuensis]

42 minutes ago, Pattern said:

Yes, in the end of Interlude 14 - Taravangian in WoR (loc. 17499 in Kindle edition):
"That was, at least, what the visions had proclaimed. Visions Gavilar had confided in him six years ago, the night of the Alethi king's death. Gavilar had seen visions of the Almighty, who was also now dead, and of a coming storm.

This not only shows that Taravangian had been present, but also that he belonged to Gavilar's inner circle of confidants (the Sons of Honor ?). In the prologue he is almost certainly the old man in robes. It also hintes that Gavilar's visions were similar to Dalinar's.

Ah. Sadly a bit late, since I already wasted an hour or so composing my other theory. But yeah, this seems to be correct.

Which, in it's own way, is very interesting. Let us dissect that quote, quick.

"Visions Gavilar had confided in him six years ago, the night of the Alethi king's death."

This means that this very meeting Eshonai has witnessed was the first time that Taravangian learned about Gavilar's visions, which, in turn, lead him to seeking the Nightwatcher, no? That makes me wonder if there was anyone else present who was not already in the know (not a member of the Sons of Honor) and that this secret / impromptu meeting was designed to convince influential figures like the King of Kharbranth to join his side.

We know Meridas was there, and now, Taravangian. That leaves one officer left and two women with long dresses.

I've seen people guess that Restares is the man and the women are two Adrotagia, Aesudan or maybe even Evi. Can we think of any other prominent females, perhaps that rule other governments, that Gavilar might want to recruit to his side / reveal his visions to? Admittedly I know nothing about Adrotagia, though I can guess she has something to do with that Amia interlude I haven't read yet. Aesudan (unless she truly is Restares' daughter) seems like a weird fit to me, and I severely doubt Evi faked her death, so I'd like to explore other options.

 

Edited August 23, 2017 by Amanuensis

[Pattern]

Adrotagia is Taravangian's childhood friend and is still around him in WoR. Thus it would not be strange for her to attend the meeting, but also not necessary.

Would the women only be scribes? I don't really think so, since I would write nothing down of such a precarious meeting. Perhaps a look into Jasnah's prologue shows some women running into her.

Edit: No, unfortunately Jasnah misses the crucial time. It's even hard to tell whether the disturbed conversation between Gavilar and Amaram in the beginning is before or after the prologue of Oathbringer.

Edited August 23, 2017 by Pattern

[Calderis]

2 hours ago, Pattern said:

Edit: No, unfortunately Jasnah misses the crucial time. It's even hard to tell whether the disturbed conversation between Gavilar and Amaram in the beginning is before or after the prologue of Oathbringer.

It's certainly after. Jasnah interrupted the conversation between Gavilar and Amaram during the feast itself, then had her Shadesmar encounter and met with Liss. 

Eshonai, after this Prologue, had to go back to the Five, deliver Gavilar's message and the sphere, discuss it and vote to kill him. Somewhere in there Kade explains about the voice in the Rhythms and What Szeth is (whether that had already been discovered or was a result of this line of reasoning I don't know), then they'd have provided him with the white clothing. All before going to the feast itself. 

In Jasnah sees Szeth at the feast in white before interrupting Gavilar. 

[ccstat]

Regarding the Rhythms, @zebobes, @Pattern we do know from WoB (below) that they exist independently of the listeners, and that they are from the Spiritual realm. Non-listeners could potentially hear and understand them, and they aren't all emotive. 

The coppermind has a list of all the Rhythms mentioned so far. There are thirty-two, five of which are "new" rhythms associated with storm form. At a glance, Terror is the only one from the prologue that didn't already appear in WoR, but I may have missed some.

I believe there are a large but finite number of rhythms. All of those should be the same for every listener, though some forms will be predisposed to hear/attune certain subsets of them.

It would be interesting if the rhythms corresponded to surges or other phenomena, but I rather doubt it. If anything, I suspect they are analogous to the allomantic pulses that bronze can sense, with the idea that everything has some signature waveform in the Spiritual realm. So listeners have a particular affinity for emotive rhythms and bronze grants an affinity for rhythms of kinetic investiture. That is just speculation, though.

WoBs spoilered for length:

Spoiler

Spiritual realm: (Source)

Quote

Q: Could a Soother prevent a listener from attuning a given rhythm?

A: No. A coppercloud could, but I hadn't thought about emotional allomancy interacting. See, the rhythm isn't your emotion and doesn't determine your mood. It is a direct connection to the spiritual realm. So I guess soothing could make it harder just like it makes anything harder, in the same way that driving a car would be harder. [recording starts here] And so, for the same reasons that you can, um, it is possible that a coppercloud can play with it.  Not a normal power of a coppercloud, but you’ve seen them do stuff similar.

Not just emotive:(Source)

Quote

ROSSNEWBERRY

Later, I asked Brandon what the Rhythm was for the Listener Song of Listing.

BRANDON SANDERSON

He said that it's not one of the emotive Rhythms, and that the Parshendi have certain Rhythms for those chants.

Others can hear/understand them:(source) and (Source)

Quote

AETHENOTH

Can an allomantic bronze burner hear the rhythms on Roshar?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Yes, this is possible.

 

Quote

CADMIUM

Would a Connection medallion accurately interpret a Listener’s Rhythms?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Yes, it would, but not all of it, some would be lost in translation. You’d probably lose some of the nuance. It would probably be better to give the medallion to someone who couldn't understand it than someone who spoke it.

 

Quote

 

 

Edited August 23, 2017 by ccstat

[menacekop]

NVM should have read the whole thread before posting.

Edited August 23, 2017 by menacekop

[PunSpren]

9 hours ago, Amanuensis said:

Building a theory now, but it's slightly hinged on one thing: do we have any previous hint at Taravangian being present at Gavilar's assassination? Because that doesn't feel right to me at all. He's the King of Kabranth, which kind of makes him a big deal, so I would expect it to have been commented on by Dalinar or Jasnah at some point throughout the Way of Kings, particularly in the scenes where Jasnah interacted with him.

We know from WOK from Mr. T himself that Gavilar told him things that night. But then again Kabranth is a small city, and your talking about the king of an essentially a world power. Its not unreasonable that it wouldn't be particularly notable. They would treat him respectfully of course, but notable? Not necessarily

[Pattern]

14 minutes ago, menacekop said:

I thought we already knew who the other bondsmith spren were, Nightwatcher and Cusicesh the Protector.

The spren of the other bondsmiths are just speculation at the moment. Cusicesh though was somewhere mentioned as a much less powerful spren than the Stormfather or the Nightwatcher.

1 hour ago, Calderis said:

It's certainly after. Jasnah interrupted the conversation between Gavilar and Amaram during the feast itself, then had her Shadesmar encounter and met with Liss. 

Somehow I had the Oathbringer prologue also placed during the time of the feast. Obviously drums are not transported in during the feast, but before in preparation.

[Calderis]

27 minutes ago, Pattern said:

Somehow I had the Oathbringer prologue also placed during the time of the feast. Obviously drums are not transported in during the feast, but before in preparation

Yeah, it actually didn't click into my head until the second time reading it and realizing that after the decision was made to kill Gavilar, she played drums at the feast. 

Considering both previous prologues occurred in roughly the same timeframe, not just the same day, I'd assumed this one would as well. It took more than one read to shake that assumption off. 

[Jofwu]

Here's something I've been wondering about this morning... What's the purpose of this treaty?

It sounds like Gavilar's plan is to release the Parshendi gods, bring on the Everstorm/Desolation, summon the Heralds and Radiants, and duke it out with the Voidbringers once and for all. He more or less confides this plan to Eshonai and bid her share it with the Five.

So what purpose does the treaty serve?

In TWoK, Jasnah supposes that he was after their Shardblades, but I don't see how that fits here. And I don't see any other great answers.

[Jaconis]

3 minutes ago, jofwu said:

Here's something I've been wondering about this morning... What's the purpose of this treaty?

It sounds like Gavilar's plan is to release the Parshendi gods, bring on the Everstorm/Desolation, summon the Heralds and Radiants, and duke it out with the Voidbringers once and for all. He more or less confides this plan to Eshonai and bid her share it with the Five.

So what purpose does the treaty serve?

In TWoK, Jasnah supposes that he was after their Shardblades, but I don't see how that fits here. And I don't see any other great answers.

Well, I think it's because he's working under the misguided assumption that they want their Gods back. The treaty is there so that they can more easily work together to achieve this goal. 

Theres not much logic behind the idea, because as you imply he seems to understand this would bring war between their peoples, voiding the treaty at that point. Then again, there's not a lot of logic behind much of anything he says in this prologue. 

[Nathrangking]

3 minutes ago, jofwu said:

Here's something I've been wondering about this morning... What's the purpose of this treaty?

It sounds like Gavilar's plan is to release the Parshendi gods, bring on the Everstorm/Desolation, summon the Heralds and Radiants, and duke it out with the Voidbringers once and for all. He more or less confides this plan to Eshonai and bid her share it with the Five.

So what purpose does the treaty serve?

In TWoK, Jasnah supposes that he was after their Shardblades, but I don't see how that fits here. And I don't see any other great answers.

To him that treaty would almost certainly be a means to an end of getting close to them and in turn discovering a way to transform them in a way which would bring about the  final desolation, In the public eye this would be an opportunity of greater trade and possibly innovation as they learned more from this strange new people. 

[Calderis]

29 minutes ago, jofwu said:

So what purpose does the treaty serve?

I think that this was all about perception. 

If there was ongoing communication between Alethkar and a tribal group of what human nations would consider "savages" it would raise suspicion as to what exactly the Alethi had found. 

With this treaty, especially with the way it implied as focusing on trade rules, Gavilar just needs to find something that can be traded for and then continued communications could be masked as trade. 

I think the entire purpose of the treaty was to continue his plan without revealing his interest in the Parshendi themselves. 

Edited August 23, 2017 by Calderis

[+eveorjoy]

7 minutes ago, jofwu said:

Here's something I've been wondering about this morning... What's the purpose of this treaty?

It sounds like Gavilar's plan is to release the Parshendi gods, bring on the Everstorm/Desolation, summon the Heralds and Radiants, and duke it out with the Voidbringers once and for all. He more or less confides this plan to Eshonai and bid her share it with the Five.

So what purpose does the treaty serve?

In TWoK, Jasnah supposes that he was after their Shardblades, but I don't see how that fits here. And I don't see any other great answers.

Time for some more wild speculation from me.  

I think I have an idea why Galivar wanted the treaty so badly. Galivar wanted a treaty to help the Voidbringers become a true threat. I change my mind about Galivar. Galivar really was a psychopathic nut at the end who was hoping for a glorious multi-generational war to keep his kingdom together beyond his death and restore its glory. He knew what he had done in giving Eshonai that back orb.

I was listening to the prologue of WoK again when he tells Szeth it is too late to stop him. That is because he has given the voidspren to Eshonai earlier. He had been right. Eshonai likely gave it to the five who gave it to Venli to study. Venli was corrupted by it and set a plan in motion to do what Galivar hoped they would do. It turns out the treaty was unnecessary and war was enough to drive the Parshendi back to their Gods.

Now if that was all Galivar had to do, give a black orb to a Listener to start the last desolation, why not do this before? He didn't have the orb with him when he was hunting on the shattered plains. In fact, he might have just obtained the orbs the very day of the feast.

Here is how I think Galivar's plan came about.

Galivar had the dreams at some point and completely missed their meaning. I also believe he had all of visions Dalinar had and even a few more repeated viewings of the cycle than his brother. I think he told these visions to a select few that he felt were of the same mind about Vorinism, God, the Heralds, and the World. Amaram was among this group while his own wife and brother were not. That brings up many questions that will take me off topic so I won't mention them here. Galivar didn't take the visions as literally as Dalinar. He saw them with his own spin. For example, he didn't believe his God was dead. Amaram, who had been told these visions before, said as much in WoR to Dalinar. He said Dalinar had misunderstood the part where God had said he was dead. Amaram said what God meant was he was dead in the hearts of men. I believe Galivar thought this as well. Galivar and the Sons of Honor interpreted his dreams as a call to bring the world back to God and Vorinism though the final desolation that would bring the Heralds back and unite the world. He says in the new prologue that they needed to go back to war and finish the battle they started. Also the visions show Alethkar as the warrior kingdom that birthed and breed the soldiers of the desolation. I think Galivar was hoping the Final Desolation would restore his kingdom to this and insure its survival beyond his death. 

So Galivar and the Sons of Honor studied all they could about what really happened to the Heralds and Voidbringers. Ironically, it was the Dalinar who he kept out of the loop who led him to the last free voidbringers. He knew he needed to keep them safe so they could return to strength and start the war a new. So he insisted on a treaty to protect them. He then sought out voidspren to restore them. He was not afraid of this war because he didn't believe it would kill his people. The rise of the Voidbringers would bring back the Heralds and cause God to come alive again in men's hearts. Then they would fight a final battle with the Voidbringers and win.

Of course I am guessing all of this. However if this is true, Galivar was a bit insane.

[yulerule]

On 2/19/2017 at 2:36 PM, yulerule said:

I asked two things about parshmen and Parshendi today. So, I asked if a Parshendi takes a parshmen by the hand, leads him out into a highstorm with a gemstone that has a spren trapped in it, will the parshmen transform. 

Brandon said, yes, now they will, but before not. So basically now that the Everstorm is here, they can be transformed, but before they couldn't. 

 

 

Also I asked about the new Rythyms, as I found it suspicious that the Listeners didn't have "bad" emotions. Brandon said that the Listeners did have ridicule, and so on, but before they would say it to the Rythyms of amusement.

 

So bad emotions were there but not the Rythyms

So I asked Brandon these two things, and they're pretty relevant here.  Gavalivar talks about a crucial spren. The parshmen could not transform before, but the Parshendi could. After the Everstorm, the parshmen have the potential to transform into the Parshendi regular forms, not just become Voidbringers(Storm form).

 

 

Edit: Also, a Discord group was mentioned...? I recently got Discord myself, so....

Edited August 23, 2017 by yulerule

[Azul]

8 hours ago, Pattern said:

Yes, in the end of Interlude 14 - Taravangian in WoR (loc. 17499 in Kindle edition):
"That was, at least, what the visions had proclaimed. Visions Gavilar had confided in him six years ago, the night of the Alethi king's death. Gavilar had seen visions of the Almighty, who was also now dead, and of a coming storm.

This not only shows that Taravangian had been present, but also that he belonged to Gavilar's inner circle of confidants (the Sons of Honor ?). In the prologue he is almost certainly the old man in robes. It also hintes that Gavilar's visions were similar to Dalinar's.

 

While I agree this likely indicates he was present at the feast the existence of spanreeds means its not 100% conclusive. It is possible, however unlikely, that Galivar sent him the info via spanreed on the day he was killed.

[Amended]

Well, here we go. I'm not sure any of the parties knew quite what they were getting into.

[Calderis]

26 minutes ago, Azul said:

While I agree this likely indicates he was present at the feast the existence of spanreeds means its not 100% conclusive. It is possible, however unlikely, that Galivar sent him the info via spanreed on the day he was killed.

I am not saying that you're incorrect, so please don't take it that way. I'm honestly curious. With the leaps forward that are being made in Fabrial-Tech, were spanreeds already available at that time? Do we know when they were invented? 

Edited August 23, 2017 by Calderis

[Azul]

11 minutes ago, Calderis said:

I am not saying that you're incorrect, so please don't take it that way. I'm honestly curious. With the leaps forward that are being made in Fabrial-Tech, we spanreeds already available at that time? Do we know when they were invented? 

I was mainly playing devils advocate, I don't really believe he would send this sort of information over spanreed, just pointing out it could be possible.  I did a quick search and couldn't find any info on how long spanreeds have been around so I"m searching the books now.  I vaguely remember mention of them being used when the Parshendi were first found.

**update** 

Found it!

Quote

 But this would have alienated allies, and could have undermined the kingdom. Elhokar argued for leniency toward Roshone, and his father agreed via spanreed.

 

Edited August 23, 2017 by Azul
updated

[PunSpren]

5 minutes ago, Azul said:

I was mainly playing devils advocate, I don't really believe he would send this sort of information over spanreed, just pointing out it could be possible.  I did a quick search and couldn't find any info on how long spanreeds have been around so I"m searching the books now.  I vaguely remember mention of them being used when the Parshendi were first found.

you also have to consider Gavilar couldn't write it himself, he would have to transcribe the message to Mr.T

[Azul]

3 minutes ago, PunSpren said:

you also have to consider Gavilar couldn't write it himself, he would have to transcribe the message to Mr.T

I don't think that matters in this case,  It would be like receiving a telegraph for us,  you would consider it from the person that dictated it not from the telegraph operator.  That said I think this is the main reason that Gavilar would NOT send the info via spanreed.  He obviously kept this information very well hidden seeing that both Navani and Dalinar were unaware he ever had visions.  I was just trying to point out that Mr. T's statement was not 100% proof he was at the treaty signing.

[Ciridae]

3 hours ago, eveorjoy said:

I was listening to the prologue of WoK again when he tells Szeth it is too late to stop him. That is because he has given the voidspren to Eshonai earlier. He had been right. Eshonai likely gave it to the five who gave it to Venli to study. Venli was corrupted by it and set a plan in motion to do what Galivar hoped they would do.

I was going to say something similar, the fact that he says Thaidakar is too late implies that he believes he's set of events that will result in the discovery of voidforms. I also think that Gavilar's idea that the Listeners want their gods to return comes from interactions with Venli. It would explain why Gavilar knows Eshonai surprisingly well, and feels that he can just straight up tell her that plan, even if he suspects he faces assassination if the wrong people got wind of it. If he knew Eshonai was Venli's sister, he might expect her to share the same views as her. Tangential, but interesting is that Gavilar seems sure that the ghostbloods knew of his plan and were going to intercede but in the end they didn't, at least not that we know of. 

I also find interesting that the second person Gavilar suspects to have sent Szeth is Restares, a supposed ally. If the other general in the room besides Amaram really was Restares, I think that Restares might have voiced concerns, resulting in Gavilar questioning his loyalty and suspecting him of sending the assassin. 

Edit: I agree with @maxal that there are so many tidbits that point to Eshonai being our Willshaper in this chapter. Another hint could be in the chapter name, we know that keenspren are a thing, I'm not sure if they are confirmed to be nahel spren but lets assume they are. I think we got the meaning of keen from a translation as lament or wail, so maybe the chapter heading is a subtle nod to the Willshaper spren. I just hope the spren aren't sad and downbeat the entire time, that would be a little disappointing. 

Edited August 23, 2017 by Ciridae