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Stormlight Archive Foreshadowing


Child of Hodor

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Words of Radiance Omaha signing (March 13, 2014) #16 

Questioner

So do you know quite a bit about what the end of the <Stormlight series> is going to be?

Brandon Sanderson

I do.  I do indeed.  I've actually written the epilogue of Book 5.  

Questioner

Oh yeah?

Brandon Sanderson

Just to get into my head.  I wrote it out.  Peter, my assistant, sent an explanation point after he saw that appear in the Wiki and stuff.  So yes.  And actually the ending of the entire series of the ten books is somewhere in those two books, just like with Mistborn it was in the first page.  It's not on the first page but it is in those two books.  

 

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Shadows of Self release party (Oct. 5, 2015)
#5 

Questioner

Do you already know how The Stormlight Archive is going to end?

Brandon Sanderson

Do I know how The Stormlight Archive is going to end. Yes I do! *crowd cheers* I'm an outliner, so I have lots of plans. I have not yet written the last scene. I wrote the last scene of Book 5 just so I had it in hand, 'cause there's two five book arcs. But I've known for many years and what's going to happen is hidden in the books already. So! *crowd woos* When it happens you'll be able to go "OH!!" When it happens in twenty years-- *laughter*

From these two WoBs it seems Brandon has foreshadowed what is going to happen at the end of Book 5 in the first two books. I started looking for these foreshadowing elements. I'll share one, but please share any you have noticed. 

The one I've zeroed in on is Honor + Odium = Justice Shard with Dalinar holding it. Justice stresses the importance of following a code of conduct or laws and punishes those that violate the codes. 

Mistborn Spoiler

Spoiler

It's very similar Mistborn's ending which makes me skeptical, but I found a good amount of foreshadowing.

Some passages that hint at that:

WoK Chapter 4 The Shattered Plains

Kaladin and the slaves find out their destination is the warcamps at the Shattered Plains "Perhaps we'll find justice there" pg. 188 of iBooks. 

"The other slaves kept talking about the king's army, and about justice. Justice?" pg. 190 of iBooks. 

"I'm not convinced there is such a thing as justice." pg. 190 of iBook. 

Kaladin ultimately meets Dalinar on the Shattered plains. 

WoK Chapter 69 Justice

Navani hears that Dalinar may be dead. She draws a giant glyph on the ground prays. "She bowed her head before the prayer. It was only a single character, but a complex one. Thath. Justice." pg. 2395 in iBooks

Dalinar confronts Sadeas who is standing on the giant glyph of Justice. "Justice. There was something magnificently appropriate about Sadeas standing there, treading upon justice." pg. 2407 in iBooks

Dalinar talks to Elhokar in the king's chamber "We're going to win this war, and we're going to turn Alethkar into a place that men will envy again. Not because of our military prowess, but because people here are safe and because justice reigns." pg. 2432 of iBooks.

Navani prays about Justice and Dalinar shows up. Dalinar stresses the importance of justice.  I should note Kaladin is present for all of these mentions except the last one with the Elhokar. It could be Kaladin, but I feel this is hinting at Dalinar. 

 

There is also this WoB 

 
Quote

 

Calamity Seattle signing (Feb. 17, 2016)
#16

Questioner

What Shard is the opposite of Odium in the sense of the *inaudible*

Brandon Sanderson

There are several that could be considered opposites--

Questioner

I mean in the assimilation sense, you’ve said that Odium doesn’t want to absorb any of the other ones but which one would want to?

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, which one would want to join with him?

Questioner

Or any of them.

Brandon Sanderson

I think that if personalities had been different, Honor and Odium, there would have been a very natural pairing, not that they’re opposites but they would have attracted. [...]

 

 

Edited by Child of Hodor
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Two other ideas WRT this:

First, Dalinar is now both the man holding the remnants of Honor's name and power and Odium's chosen champion, giving him a legitimate connection to both Shards.

Second, one of the epigraphs (in WoR, I believe), talks about how Odium "holds the weight of God's own divine Hatred, separated from the virtues that gave it context". So being linked with Honor might help stabilize Odium.

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25 minutes ago, Leyrann said:

A valid theory.

Another common one is based on a deathrattle and Dalinar's vision at the end of WoK, and is that Roshar may be completely destroyed at some point.

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"A man stood on a cliffside and watched his homeland fall into dust. The waters surged beneath, so far beneath. And he heard a child crying. They were his own tears." WoK Chapter 3 Epigraph

That's a good one. We've been told that humans shattered the Shattered Plains. We know the surface of Ashyn was mostly wrecked by something humans did that relates to the surges. My guess is Division could wreck the surface. "Using the Surge of Division, the Surgebinder can touch an object and cause it to burn, turn to dust, or decay in other ways."  https://coppermind.net/wiki/Surgebinding#Division

What the epigraph describes and what Dalinar's final vision where the ground collapses around him, remind me of what happens when a nuke is set off underground.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCPhJpUrvak

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"Victory! We stand atop the mount! We scatter them before us! Their homes become our dens, their lands are now our farms! And they shall burn, as we once did, in a place that is hollow and forlorn." WoK Chapter 8 Epilogue

 

 

I know people have talked about this being about the humans driving out the singers, but these are supposed to be of the future. This sounds like Urithiru being taken over by the Singers. I would think this happens in book 4 and maybe the radiants find the Sibling and take the tower back.   I suppose it could be about Kholinar being captured, the palace was on a big hill and that's where the last of Alethi resistance was. place hollow and forlorn could be Shadesmar. 

Edited by Child of Hodor
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1 hour ago, Child of Hodor said:

I know people have talked about this being about the humans driving out the singers, but these are supposed to be of the future. This sounds like Urithiru being taken over by the Singers. I would think this happens in book 4 and maybe the radiants find the Sibling and take the tower back.   I suppose it could be about Kholinar being captured, the palace was on a big hill and that's where the last of Alethi resistance was. place hollow and forlorn could be Shadesmar. 

The death rattles can be about the future, but they don't have to be. They just access the Spiritual Realm which is not time constrained. 

We see death rattles from Taln that aren't, at least by all appearances, from the future. 

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"What's going to happen is hidden in the books already."

I kind of don't want to guess it, really. Not if it takes away a 20-year buildup of an aha moment! But I can't help it.

He didn't say that it was contained in the chapter eipgraphs, as it was in Mistborn, which would be kind of too closely echoing the earlier work, anyway.

So I think the foreshadowing of the ultimate ending is in...

The descriptions of the Recreance.

It's gonna happen again.

After all, Pattern has said more than once (in the second book, even), "it is inevitable." And so did the Stormfather, to Kaladin.

And it will happen in a way very similar to Dalinar's vision of it from Honor in the first book.

But this time, we'll know why, in full, and why it is right, and maybe, it'll play out differently (without massive spren-killing), or maybe not.

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13 hours ago, Child of Hodor said:

That's a good one. We've been told that humans shattered the Shattered Plains. We know the surface of Ashyn was mostly wrecked by something humans did that relates to the surges. My guess is Division could wreck the surface. "Using the Surge of Division, the Surgebinder can touch an object and cause it to burn, turn to dust, or decay in other ways."  https://coppermind.net/wiki/Surgebinding#Division

What the epigraph describes and what Dalinar's final vision where the ground collapses around him, remind me of what happens when a nuke is set off underground.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCPhJpUrvak

 

I know people have talked about this being about the humans driving out the singers, but these are supposed to be of the future. This sounds like Urithiru being taken over by the Singers. I would think this happens in book 4 and maybe the radiants find the Sibling and take the tower back.   I suppose it could be about Kholinar being captured, the palace was on a big hill and that's where the last of Alethi resistance was. place hollow and forlorn could be Shadesmar. 

 

Add to these Wit's exchanges with Dalinar.

On the destruction of Roshar:

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And while I am your friend, please understand that our goals do not completely align. You must not trust yourself with me. If I have to watch this world crumble and burn to get what I need, I will do so. With tears, yes, but I would let it happen.

(Edit) Just to be totally beat-you-over-the-head, but we know from Wit's letters that his goal is really to get Rayse out of the picture for good. Not necessarily splintering the shard of Odium, but to have it inhabit a better person (or, perhaps even better, to have it tempered by the impulses of another shard).

On re-assembling pieces of a soul:

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I wonder if you could do that to a man. Pull him apart, emotion by emotion, bit by bit, bloody chunk by bloody chunk. Then combine them back together into something else, like a Dysian Aimian. If you do put a man together like that, Dalinar, be sure to name him Gibberish, after me. Or perhaps Gibletish.

So we have some foreshadowing for both theories. Perhaps Roshar will be destroyed in order that Dalinar combine Honor and Odium; with the alternative being something even worse (like the destruction of all life on Roshar). 

(Edit) It's also worth noting that the foreshadowing in Mistborn is necessarily incomplete. The ending is not in the prologue, but the major ending setups are there

Spoiler

("I'm not the hero everyone thinks I am;" "future of the entire world on my arms")

These are things that make little sense without much more context. They're obvious foreshadowing only in retrospect (which, I suppose, is what a good foreshadowing is). I worry that we're being perhaps too explicit with what we're reading into, and that the "ending in the first two books" is present in the same way. Things like

 

  • UNITE THEM
  • Sphere with purple light
  • Scouring of Aimia
  • Truthless
  • Feverstone Keep

 

And many more oddities that seem to recur. We have 8 more books for the context around these to nucleate, so I suspect that piecing together a coherent narrative likely involves much more supposition than close reading.

 

Edited by lu-tze
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2 hours ago, lu-tze said:

 

Add to these Wit's exchanges with Dalinar.

On the destruction of Roshar:

(Edit) Just to be totally beat-you-over-the-head, but we know from Wit's letters that his goal is really to get Rayse out of the picture for good. Not necessarily splintering the shard of Odium, but to have it inhabit a better person (or, perhaps even better, to have it tempered by the impulses of another shard).

On re-assembling pieces of a soul:

So we have some foreshadowing for both theories. Perhaps Roshar will be destroyed in order that Dalinar combine Honor and Odium; with the alternative being something even worse (like the destruction of all life on Roshar). 

(Edit) It's also worth noting that the foreshadowing in Mistborn is necessarily incomplete. The ending is not in the prologue, but the major ending setups are there

  Reveal hidden contents

("I'm not the hero everyone thinks I am;" "future of the entire world on my arms")

These are things that make little sense without much more context. They're obvious foreshadowing only in retrospect (which, I suppose, is what a good foreshadowing is). I worry that we're being perhaps too explicit with what we're reading into, and that the "ending in the first two books" is present in the same way. Things like

 

  • UNITE THEM
  • Sphere with purple light
  • Scouring of Aimia
  • Truthless
  • Feverstone Keep

 

And many more oddities that seem to recur. We have 8 more books for the context around these to nucleate, so I suspect that piecing together a coherent narrative likely involves much more supposition than close reading.

 

You should see the Wheel of Time theorizing. We (well, they, I only showed up in like the last year) had basically everything figured out that was still going to happen, sometimes just from single lines. Of course there were also a lot of theories that were false, but everything that happened in the last book had been theorized.

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7 hours ago, Leyrann said:

You should see the Wheel of Time theorizing. We (well, they, I only showed up in like the last year) had basically everything figured out that was still going to happen, sometimes just from single lines. Of course there were also a lot of theories that were false, but everything that happened in the last book had been theorized.

When we're on book 9 of SA, we'll be in a similar theorycrafting position (and have a whole lot more context). 

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7 minutes ago, lu-tze said:

When we're on book 9 of SA, we'll be in a similar theorycrafting position (and have a whole lot more context). 

And yet, it sometimes seemed as if The Eye of the World was the most important book in such theorycrafting. So let's not give up and tell ourselves "we'll start trying in 20 years from now" but rather take a stab at it with what we have. After all, we're theorizing for fun (I hope...), no need to not theorycraft stuff because we'll be able to do it better later.

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8 hours ago, Leyrann said:

You should see the Wheel of Time theorizing. We (well, they, I only showed up in like the last year) had basically everything figured out that was still going to happen, sometimes just from single lines. Of course there were also a lot of theories that were false, but everything that happened in the last book had been theorized.

Spoiler

Demandred is Hoid.

 

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