What are the powers of today's Heralds?

[Spoolofwhool]

30 minutes ago, Madninja324 said:

I agree, however Nale is almost certainly using his (or someone's) Honorblade as Lift clearly saw him using Stormlight in some capacity, which is still using Surgebinding without being a proper Surgebinder, thus still hypocritical

Not really. He seemed to believe that Knight Radiants would provoke the True Desolation, not surgebinding. I'm not saying Nale wasn't obsessive or insane, it's just that I think his motivations were clear-cut enough that he wouldn't allow a chance for the True Desolation to occur, and was preventing in the method he thought viable. 

Edited November 1, 2016 by Spoolofwhool

[Blightsong he/him]

I just want to point out that we are pretty sure you dont have to be a surgebinder to use stormlight, you jist need a way to take in other kinetic investitures, which other magic systems can do.

[Eki]

I was thinking about something just today - when Taln (or the-person-who-thinks-he's-Taln, to use his full name) returns, he's speaking perfect Alethi. Languages must change a lot between Desolations - I'm pretty sure the Heralds can use Connection translation. (Now that I think about it, I may have seen someone else write something about that, but I don't remember where)

[Rasarr she/her]

@Eki - Heralds using Connection would make sense. Connection could let them return to Roshar after their stint in Braize, and the knowledge of language could be a useful side effect.

[cometaryorbit]

Do we know that Nale would need an Honorblade to hold Stormlight/be "awesome"? I think there's a WOB they need them to use Surges, but that could conceivably be 2 different things... do Squires get Surges, or just the ability to hold Stormlight, separately?

[Spoolofwhool]

7 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

Do we know that Nale would need an Honorblade to hold Stormlight/be "awesome"? I think there's a WOB they need them to use Surges, but that could conceivably be 2 different things... do Squires get Surges, or just the ability to hold Stormlight, separately?

I believe that Squires only get basic stormlight augmentation abilities, not full surgebinding abilities. It's possible that Nale is using some other method to hold onto stormlight without having surgebinding abilities, since we never saw him surgebind. Also, when Lift said he was "awesome", is it possible she just meant that she felt that he was holding onto some form of kinetic investiture, not necessarily stormlight. It is a bit of stretch, but maybe he went to another world in the meantime and acquired the ability to use another manifestation of investiture, or simply got his hands on some biochromatic breaths. I doubt it, but I'm interested in seeing what other people think.