Fantasycon reading

[Kurkistan he/him]

Thanks for the link, Weiry.

 

Aw, poor Kaladin always failing... I was hoping he'd at least get a bit of a win there.

[deddinty]

That was very interesting.

 

So Kaladin's eyes don't stay permanently blue. I wonder how this will effect his rank in society. He is a radiant and a shardbearer which would automatically make him 4th dahn, but he could appear as a dark eyed slave to people who see him as he is now.

[Kurkistan he/him]

That was very interesting.

 

So Kaladin's eyes don't stay permanently blue. I wonder how this will effect his rank in society. He is a radiant and a shardbearer which would automatically make him 4th dahn, but he could appear as a dark eyed slave to people who see him as he is now.

 

"Slave!", they cried out.

 

Kaladin sighed, then summoned Syl.

"Nevermind!"

Edited July 8, 2014 by Kurkistan

[Matrim Bloody Cauthon he/him]

No no no no no nooooooooooooooooooo! Its not working for me.

[Argent he/him]

The little girl jumping with excitement though. Awesomesauce.

[Delightful]

if you become a millionaire wouldn't you be able to wear a different disguise everytime? you could get his signature and enough pictures with him to fill a briefcase that you can then carry around everywhere just to say you do.

It'll be the opposite of Ash going to all the gym leaders and collecting badges and pokemon and STILL never catching them all.

[HoidsRock]

Can someone please tell how to do spoilers?  I made two attempts (both with the Spoiler reading "test") and it did not seem to work.

 

Moderators, I hid those two comments but feel free to delete them.

[WeiryWriter he/him]

Can someone please tell how to do spoilers?  I made two attempts (both with the Spoiler reading "test") and it did not seem to work.

 

Moderators, I hid those two comments but feel free to delete them.

 

To the left of the "Font" drop down there is the button for "Special BBC code" spoiler tags are one of the options in there.

[HoidsRock]

Thank you WeiryWriter!

 

So Kaladin will show up to a city where the citylord hates him, wearing slave brands, not having his Cobalt guard uniform, having dark eyes, no stormlgiht, but a treasure in gems. I am guessing he will look like a deserter and not be received particularly well.

[Kurkistan he/him]

I'm not too concerned. Shardblades tend to cause one to gloss over such trivialities, I think.

[Delightful]

Thank you WeiryWriter!

So Kaladin will show up to a city where the citylord hates him, wearing slave brands, not having his Cobalt guard uniform, having dark eyes, no stormlgiht, but a treasure in gems. I am guessing he will look like a deserter and not be received particularly well.

Forgive me please for asking the obvious but I need confirmation here before I explode: you were at the reading? This isn't speculation or a joke?

[HoidsRock]

Total speculation. 

 

I had previously wondered how Roshone would respond (assuming they met in Hearthstone) when Kaladin had blue eyes and the uniform of a Cobalt guard. So I think it interesting that BWS mentions that Kaladin has neither.

 

But since I had previously let my brain wander here, it is very likely I am over interpreting.

 

As Kurkistan points out, Kaladin still has his shard blade

[Delightful]

Total speculation.

I had previously wondered how Roshone would respond (assuming they met in Hearthstone) when Kaladin had blue eyes and the uniform of a Cobalt guard. So I think it interesting that BWS mentions that Kaladin has neither.

But since I had previously let my brain wander here, it is very likely I am over interpreting.

As Kurkistan points out, Kaladin still has his shard blade

Thanks! This made me realise I somehow missed like ten posts. Weird.:/

[WeiryWriter he/him]

So I've started transcribing the reading.  I started with the second, shorter video first (which is completed) and I'll be working on the first, longer video throughout the day.

[TheKingOfCarrotFlowers]

I'm going to go ahead and point this out, since nobody has yet:
 

I'm fairly certain that the reason that Kaladin's eyes aren't permanently changed is the same reason his slave brands aren't healing. His cognitive identity does not accept light eyes, since he hates what they represent. With Kaladin, we have a very visual representation of his sense of self--we'll know that he's accepted what he is when he looks the part.

[GreyPilgrim he/him]

There is a large part of me that wishes that this means Brandon is going to write this book next, but the rational part of me knows that he is doing Rithmatist 2 next (unless he has changed his mind). Still exciting, though!

 

Some things that interested me: First, Kaladin's being able to read Syl's emotions/understand her better. I want to say that this is not due to increased familiarity, as Kaladin thought it may be, but that it is related more to the fact that he has now said the third Windrunner oath and thus has strengthened their bond. Second, it is interesting how the Everstorm is messing with the Weeping. Can't say much on that now, but I am interested to see how the storms will interact in the normal season. If the normal seasons will even return. The Everstorm will almost certainly screw up all of Roshar's weather patterns. Third, I assume the fatigue Kaladin is experiencing is the same thing that an Pewterarm experiences after a pewter drag. It could also be another element of Stormlight's (and Investiture in general's) addictive nature.

[Moogle]

I'm going to go ahead and point this out, since nobody has yet:

 

I'm fairly certain that the reason that Kaladin's eyes aren't permanently changed is the same reason his slave brands aren't healing. His cognitive identity does not accept light eyes, since he hates what they represent. With Kaladin, we have a very visual representation of his sense of self--we'll know that he's accepted what he is when he looks the part.

 

But why would that matter? Cognitive identity only affects you when you're using magic to heal. If your theory is true, Kaladin's eyes should be brown while he's holding Stormlight, as it constantly heals him back to brown. Instead, his eyes turn back to their normal color when Kaladin abstains from Stormlight for long periods of time.

 

I think Kaladin's brown eyes are fascinating and I want to know more about the mechanics. If we go by the the Surgebinder-gemheart theory, maybe it just takes a day or so for all of his Stormlight to finally leave him and return his eyes to normal. This doesn't seem to explain why his eyes change color when he takes up Syl, though.

Edited July 8, 2014 by Moogle

[WeiryWriter he/him]

And the transcription is finished!

 

Included here (in the spoiler tag) for utilities sake:

 

...want to make a hasty exit because we are going to be reading from book three! I appreciate you coming by the way, those of you who are leaving, don’t feel bad at all. Come see me at my booth over on the other place, but this is going to be a special treat for the rest of you, so I thought I’d do it anyway. I tried to pick a piece that wouldn’t be too spoilery, but there isn’t one. I mean we’re in book three, right? It’s very spoilery. Thank you guys very much, and the rest of you are in for a treat. I’m going to take a drink, give people a chance to get out of here. This is probably a really bad marketing decision, convincing half of your audience to leave. We don’t need them anyway, right? They're not caught up to date! Alright, I’m going to give you guys a second warning, I wrote this like last week, literally last week. It has not seen any other eyes, including my own, and has not been ever read. So the sentences in particular are going to be rough, I’ll try to edit them as I go, to make it come out a little more smoothly. But just be aware, usually, particularly at the beginning of a book, I overwrite a bit, a little too much description, a little too much backstory, and I have to trim that down.

Kaladin trudged through a field of quiet rockbuds, fully aware that he was too late to prevent the disaster. The knowledge slowed him, pressing against his shoulders with an almost physical sensation, like the weight of a bridge he was forced to carry all on his own. The land around him should have felt familiar. Instead it felt wild, overgrown, alien. After so long in the stormlands, those eastern lands that bore the brunt of the storms, he’d almost forgotten the signs of a more fertile landscape. Rockbuds grew almost as big as barrels here, with vines as thick as his wrist spilling out and lapping water from the pools of stone. Grass spread in fields that came up to his waste, dappled with glowing lifespren. The grass was vibrant green, and slow to pull down into its burrows as he approached. Kaladin shook his head, the grass back near the Shattered Plains had only grown as high as his ankle and mostly came in yellowish patches on the leeward side of hills. Almost anything could be hiding in these fields. All you’d have to do is crouch down and wait for the grass to sneak back up around you and you’d have a perfect ambush point. How had he never noticed that during his youth? He’d run through many fields like this, playing catchme with his brother, trying to see who was quick enough to grab handfuls of grass before it hid.

Something caught his eye and he started toward it, startling the grass around himself in a pocket. Kaladin felt drained, used up. Like a mighty storm that had lost it’s fury and was now only a soft breeze. His dramatic flight westward had begun with more stormlight than he thought he could hold, a wealth more tucked into his pack in the form of gemstones. But it had ended with this, a limping, exhausted trudge through the fields, stormlight expended. Perhaps he could have made it all the way to northwestern Alethkar from the Shattered Plains if he’d been more practiced. Unfortunately, as it was, despite bearing a king’s wealth in gemstones for stormlight, he’d run out somewhere near Aladar’s princedom. Before he’d traveled hundreds of miles in half a day, and it still hadn’t been enough. This last bit, not thirty miles to walk, had been excruciating. So slow. He could have passed this distance in an eyeblink before, but now he’d been walking for two days. He felt like a man who had been winning a footrace only to trip and break his leg a handspan from the finish line.

He neared the object he’d seen earlier, and the grass obligingly pulled back, revealing a broken, wooden churn for turning sowsmilk into butter. Kaladin rested his fingers on the splintered wood, only the wealth had enough access to milk for this sort of thing, the churn would have been locked up tight before the storm. He glanced to the side at another chunk of wood peaking out over the tops of the grass, like the hand of a drowning man reaching toward the sky.

Syl zipped down as a ribbon of light, passing his head, and speeding around the length of wood. He could sense an inquisitiveness to her motions, even though she hadn’t manifested a face yet. Was he mistaken, or was their bond growing stronger? His ability to read her emotions, and she his, seemed to be improving. Perhaps it was just familiarity.

“It’s the side of a roof,” Kaladin said to her, “The lip that hangs down on the leeward side of a building.” Probably a storage shed judging by the debris he had spotted in the field. Alethkar was not in the stormlands but neither was it some soft-skinned western land. The villages here were made low and squat, particularly out of big sheltered cities. They’d have been pointed eastward towards the storms, and the windows would only be on the leeward side, like the grass and the trees, mankind bowed before the storms. The alternative was to be ripped apart, for the Stormfather did not suffer the insolence. But then these objects, ripped free by wind and deposited far from their origins had not come free during a normal highstorm, another more fell wind had done this deed. A storm that blew the wrong direction.

At the mere thought of that a panic grew inside of him, a feeling like he’d gotten when watching a hail of arrows fall on himself and his men. The Everstorm, as it was called, was so wrong, so unnatural, like a baby born with no face. Somethings should just not be. And the most troubling part was the storm itself was not there worst problem. He stood up and left the debris behind, continuing on his way. He’d changed uniforms before leaving, taking the Oathgate to the Shattered Plains then streaking into the sky and rushing in desperation for Alethkar. His old one had been bloody and tattered, though this one wasn’t much better. A spare, generic Kholin uniform, not even of the old Cobalt Guard. It felt wrong to bear the symbol of Bridge Four, but then a lot of things felt wrong to him these days.

I swear I recognize this place, he thought to himself, cresting a hill. A river broke the landscape to his right, but it was small and impermanent, it would only flow during a storm. Still trees sprouted along its banks hungry for the extra water and they marked the route. Yes, that would be {Pabble’s} Brook, and if he looked directly west… And shading his eyes he spotted them, cultivated hills. They stuck out like the balding crowns of elderly men, no grass, no rockbuds. They’d soon be slathered with seedcrem and lavis polyps would start growing. That hadn’t started yet most likely, this was supposed to be the Weeping. Rain should be falling right now in a constant gentle stream. The Everstorm that had blown through earlier that morning had swept the clouds along with it, stopping the rain. As much as he despised the Weeping he was not happy to see those rains go, they should have lasted another seven days but the wrong windstorm had disrupted them. Another unnatural effect. Kaladin had been forced to weather that storm in a hollow of rock, cut with a Shardblade. Storms, it had been even more eerie than a highstorm.

He crested a hill, inspecting the landscape, as he did Syl zipped down in front of him, a ribbon of light, “You’re eyes are brown again,” she noted. It took a few years without touching stormlight or summoning a Shardblade, once he did either thing his eyes would bleed to a glassy light blue, almost glowing. A few hours later they’d fade again. Syl found the variation fascinating.

[break between videos]

Kaladin grunted, continuing down the slope.

“Do you like my new look?” Syl asked wagging her covered safehand.

“It looks strange on you.”

“I’ll have you know I put a ton of thought into it,” Syl said in a huff, “I spend positively hours thinking of just how-- OOH! What’s that!” She zipped away, turning into a little storm cloud that came to rest over a lurg clinging to the stone. She inspected the fist-sized amphibian on one side, and then the other, before squealing in joy and turning a perfect imitation, except a pale blue-white. This startled the thing away and she giggled back to Kaladin as a ribbon of light. “What were we saying?” She asked, forming into a young woman and resting on his shoulder.

“Nothing important.”

“I’m sure I was scolding you,” Syl said, tapping her shoulder with her finger in a pensive way, “Regardless, you’re home. Yay! Aren’t you excited?”

He shook his head. She didn’t see it, didn’t realize. Sometimes, for all her curiosity, she could be so oblivious…

“But it’s your home,” Syl said. She hung down. “What’s wrong? Why are you feeling like this?”

“The Everstorm, Syl,” Kaladin said, “We were supposed to beat it here.” He’d needed to be it here. Storms, why hadn’t he been faster. He’d spend much of the day before in a forced march, as fast as he could manage. Never even stopping to sleep, perhaps that was why he felt so drained, like he’d been lifting his arms, a chore. Being without stormlight after holding so much was part of it too. He felt like a hogshide tube that had been squeezed and squeezed to get the last of the antiseptic out, leaving only the husk. Was this what I was going to be like everytime he used a lot of stormlight and then ran dry? The arrival of the Everstorm that morning had caused him to collapse, finally giving into his fatigue. That had been the ringing of the bell that noticed the failure.

We will stop there.

[Delightful]

Ok. This is amazing.

Syl is adorable as usual. And poor Kaladin, is anything ever going to work out for him ? I'm scared for the state he'll find Hearthstone in after the Everstorm. I guess this means Dalinar didn't get to warn/be taken seriously by everyone in time. Which is scary because Roshar was desolate already, and if it goes post-apocalyptic with the Everstorm, it could get even worse. :/

Can we assume those hills he recognised are the hills of Hearthstone, like round about where he first fought that farmers son with Laral watching?

Edit: thanks so much for the transcription Weiry!

the 'like a child without a face' line is way creepy and makes me question if Kal has seen such a person.

Also, does anyone else find it amusing that after worrying about the Everstorm, Kal swears as 'storms'. It's almost *too* appropriate.

Edited July 8, 2014 by Delightful

[Kasimir he/him]

Thanks, Weiry!

 

From the looks of it, this at least is not different between Kaladin and Szeth then. When Szeth summoned his Honorblade, his eyes shifted colour as well.

[Argent he/him]

We should probably put a big Stones Unhallowed Spoilers sign somewhere and stop talking behind the tags...

 

"like a child without a face" also sounded awfully... specific to me. It made me think of the Unmade, or maybe the Ten Fools. But more then Unmade.

[Kurkistan he/him]

Good idea, Arget.

 

HERE BE STONES UNHALLOWED SPOILERS. ALL YEE WHO GO BEYOND THIS POINT BE WARNED.

 

Thanks, Weiry!

 

From the looks of it, this at least is not different between Kaladin and Szeth then. When Szeth summoned his Honorblade, his eyes shifted colour as well.

 

Eh. Obviously there's a parallel here, but I'd hesitate to say "not different". There's so very much that's different between the two of them.

 

For one, for some reason I doubt that Szeth's eyes "lasted" for hours after he dismissed his Blade.

[Moogle]

For one, for some reason I doubt that Szeth's eyes "lasted" for hours after he dismissed his Blade.

 

You're right, they don't. They also don't change color when Szeth is 'just' holding Stormlight. Szeth either has something different going on, or else his bond to his Blade is not as strong as Kaladin's to Syl. Kaladin's eyes temporarily changed to blue all the way back in WoK, though, as Teft notes, so there's differences even there between Kal and Szeth.

[Meerletalis]

Is there any chance of a posting of the transcript to somewhere beside Google Docs?  It is an untrusted site.

[GreyPilgrim he/him]

Is there any chance of a posting of the transcript to somewhere beside Google Docs?  It is an untrusted site.

 

Weiry just posted it here a few posts above, under a spoiler tag.