kaellok

1. Mr T's conversation says that Heleran would be able to train a potential Surgebinder if he found one, which merely implies that he'd be able to know one when found--Heleran-as-Surgebinder-himself is actually not implied at all, but rather assumed (it's a reasonable assumption taken by itself, but the other evidence present suggests otherwise.) You'll remember that Kaladin was the Surgebinder, and yet it was (shoot, I forget his name) who was helping guide him through his training. And Kaladin's Bridge 4 friend was able to do this training because of his former membership in one of the oh-so-many secret societies in Roshar. Since Heleran was also in a secret society of Roshar, he could have access to the same types/kinds of information and have been attempting to provide the same kind of guidance. 2. There's a Words of Brandon compiled thread that was being maintained/updated for a time here that answers the question. There's another page entirely that has a much larger database, but I can never remember what it is and my Google-fu is failing me due to 330am.

In addition to what others have said: Pre-Recreance, those with dark eyes held power (note: I don't remember it being specifically clear in the chapter "Starfall" of WoK whether only the darkeyes were in positions of authority, or if Dalinar's assumed persona's eye color was mentioned.) We don't know the exact power structure, but it was certainly not the same system that exists in the 'present'. Hoid also tells Kaladin that basing power off of eye color is no worse or different than most other ways, and actually has some basis of fact to it (fact? legitimacy? I forget the exact word used when talking about this to Kaladin.) (Tried doing a quick google search after I couldn't find it randomly flipping through the book, and found the Coppermind link on lighteyes here, which seems to reference this.) We also know that wielding a Shardblade will change the color of someone's eyes, probably permanently. Every Shardbearer has lighteyes while wielding their Shardblade, after all, even if they were darkeyes before. It's entirely reasonable and likely to assume that Bond made with the Blade alters the person's sDNA permanently, and becomes a heritable trait. The Royal Locks seen in Warbreaker are a trait likely expressed similarly, and we may be seeing strains of this in the Alethi hair (where someone who is half-Alethi has exactly half of their hair black, the other half red or blonde or whatever. Unless I got the colors wrong in my imagination again. But the percentage thing remains the same regardless.) All of the evidence (of which there is a surprising amount) suggests that there is more to the lightyeye/darkeye caste split than lighteyes being "closer to the gods." Instead, it suggests that the lighteyes took the Shards left behind by the Radiants post-Recreance, and used them as weapons to impose their will on the nation. As Shards were lost over time, the tradition of lighteyes ruling while darkeyes served became entrenched instead of "I have a Shard that made me a lighteyes--do what I say or I will kill you and your hundred soldiers and take what I wanted anyway." (Of interesting note is that Vorin legend has it that any who wields a Shard will become a lighteyes. This is proven true with Moash. According to the same legend, their children will also be a lighteyes. The only reference to this I could find in a WoB was RAFOd, so we don't have conclusive evidence--yet. Perhaps the next novel will cover a year or so, and Moash will be a father.)

Yes. Yes I do. Also trying to find if there's a place that has a room full of kittens and puppies I can roll around in. They make those, right?

Long story ensues! tl;dr -- my birthday is in a few days, and it's going to be the worst one I've had in a decade because of reasons. Spoilered to save space

When unsheathed, Nightblood consumes Investiture (including that which allows people to live) until it is sheathed again. This is utterly independent of its ability to cut through anything like a Shardblade. Think of a nuclear weapon that kills only living things. Now imagine it starting with a small epicenter, and a possibly infinite radius. This is Nightblood. This is why Szeth would be able to easily (easily) counter 8 people wielding Honorblades, even if they are fully versed and skilled in their use. Their lives would be measured in the seconds of Stormlight that they have stored--Stormlight which is considered rare and precious to them (remember how Szeth feels that it's a profane use of Stormlight just to light hallways and corridors? I can think of zero examples in history where something sacred was also incredibly prevalent.) Or we can just assume that since they have incredibly mild effects from Highstorms, they also don't get that much in the way of Stormlight, since the Highstorm is the primary source for Stormlight distribution.

Also keep in mind that Kaladin shatters some Plate just by lashing himself repeatedly and falling into it (albeit at the price of his own legs.) Plate is really just not super-effective against kinetic energy weapons, and guns are superb at this kind of attack.

Nightblood isn't of Honor, Cultivation, or Odium, so it's impossible for Nightblood to grant any surges. Warbreaker spoilers

Have posted the link to the literally single-digit followers I have that hang off of my every word. One of them is my mom. So, you'll probably have at least one more survey completed, since I also did the survey thing she was posting about. Considering tweeting the link directly to Kevin Bacon and then using the power of reverse degrees of Bacon to further disseminate it to the wild. Think it's worth doing, or not really? Also, it's 2am and I just got off of a scheduled 30 minute work call that lasted 4 hours, so my brain is basically mush--please excuse any insanity or stupidity that rises above what I usually spew forth

I still like it, and it's fun, like I said I also noticed some misspellings and grammar and stuff, and flagged the questions. Seems like a pretty mammoth undertaking, so hope it helps.

Pretty fun. There's an insane number of questions regarding which generation a kandra is part of. I get them all wrong. Every one of them. I had ten in a row, lost 100 points. I see more questions of that type than any aside from classification of the metals. Any way to tone it down a bit? Am I the only one who godawful at getting which generation the kandra is from correct?

i appreciate this more than most might imagine. i spent most of a saturday doing nothing but trying to figure out a fitness and meal plan for myself. and i ended up with, 'stuff it. this is complicated, hard, and contradictory even within the same website. i'll just try to eat more veggies and run more.' it has not worked well for me, although i do eat eat veggies with some meals and i run at least once a week, so it's still an improvement. maybe my google-fu was bad that day, but i literally spent hours and came away as clueless as i went into it. i was able to teach myself the basics of physics in the same amount of time (because the teacher kept wanting me to draw pictures and i wanted math and numbers). i'll share the link with some friends, and see if i can help you get some more numbers (no promises).

Completed survey! In case it helps, explaining some of my already lengthy answers in paragraphs below. I'd like to work out more. I'd like to eat healthier. I am lazy. I need help to do these things, or else I won't on my own. I like having a tool that tells me what to do when (such as, when to eat, what I should be eating for that meal, what exercise to do, how long, when I should be doing it, exercises that I can be doing throughout the day, etc.), that is also customizable. Early on I'll want as much detail as possible (eat 3 eggs, 2 pieces of whole wheat toast, and 8 oz of orange juice for breakfast; do 5 minutes crunches; etc.), but I'll want the ability to tune the detail up or down at will. I have little idea of what is actually healthy vs. what is a current health fad that will later be proven false, aside from "eat more vegetables", and that's mostly because I don't eat near enough vegetables. Give me reminders. SO, maybe there'll be something that pops up saying, "Do five minutes of crunches!" and I have the options of "Doing right now!" or "Remind me in an hour" or "Not today". And then have the reminders persist. Sometimes at work I have free time to do a bit of workout, and sometimes I don't. Sometimes at home I have no time at all, and others I do. So let me adjust it without having to break something. It's annoying when I want to adjust my alarm clock for just one day on my phone, and my laziness will strike at any hardship or difficulty to just stop. Give me hard data! Lots of it! And give me a few ways to view it. Pie charts, graphs, and Excel tables are all equally wonderful things that I love for very different reasons. Your app would presumably be keeping track of a lot of variables, and I'd want to have access to literally all of it. Hell, I can never remember what I weigh from one day to the next, and I weigh myself when I go rock climbing at the indoor gym 3 times a week, so even that little bit would help me to see that something is happening even if I can't see it. Being able to customize the type of workout you're wanting ("I want to lose weight!" "I want to have huuuuge arms!" "I want to run fast!" "I want a six-pack!") would be tremendous. What I want isn't going to be easy or cheap, because my expectations are high and anything less seems like a waste, especially if you're wanting me to pay money for it.

They are--from enemy fire and weapons coming at them. From the user? Well, generally that, too, but less so. At least I'm not the guy that shot his own tank (also a true story...we were doing a familiarization fire with the loader's 240 machine gun. He'd forgotten to lock the mount before firing, and wasn't prepared for the recoil. Since it was completely loose, it fired a bit wildly, and hit the tank several times. You could see where it happened afterwards, from the scoring in the paint.) And what Kaymyth said. A thousand times over.

Added the upvote that Landis intended. Now then! Why would Khriss be looking for Vasher on Scadrial? We know that there are a few different ways to Worldhop. Perhaps Vasher only knew of one, and Khriss knew this, and further knew that this one method of Worldhopping would require Vasher to pay a visit to Scadrial. After all, it's called 'hopping' not 'instantaneous transportation from Point A to Point B.' And in a side-note, it sounds a bit like island-hopping, which was the strategy the US Navy used in WW2 in the Pacific specifically because of the vast distances and logistical/supply nightmare if they didn't--so Sanderson may have named it something similar for similar reasons. Or perhaps Khriss taught him how to Worldhop, but only gave directions that got him to Scadrial, where she planned to leave him for later retrieval. I've got nothing at all to counter point 2, though

Odium isn't Investiture, though. Holds a whole lot of it, sure. But would be more accurately described as Investiture given the embodiment and personality of Divine Hatred. A hurricane can't be evil, but that's because it can't be alive, has no sentience, no conscious thought. If it could--well then. Odium, and all the Shardholders, seem to be much like that--self-aware, intelligent, sentient, sapient energy made manifest. (Whether Odium is actually evil or not is debatable, but I think his capacity to be evil is not.) I think that the greatest argument for Nightblood being a weapon to be used against Odium, though, is that Sanderson wrote Warbreaker in part to give Nightblood and Vasher a backstory to the events that happen on Roshar in the SA.

Let's see. I was born in '82. So, carry the one. Add the three. Move the decimal to the left three places. Multiply by pie. Multiply the pies. Eat the pies. I'm sorry, forgot where I was at. Fun fact about me, though! When I am ~73, I invent (steal?) a working time machine. At some point, I find my younger (28) self walking along the street in downtown Seattle while somewhat drunk. I punch my younger self in the face, and then skip off laughing maniacally.

True story: I was in the Army. I drove tanks. In OSUT (Basic Training + Advanced training squished together into 4 months of Hell) I broke tanks. I broke more tanks myself than everyone else in the company combined. This is one of those stories. So, we were at the Basic Driving Course day run. Large open area with a number of tracks criss-crossing over some limited and carefully prepared cross-country ground. The entire point is to get new drivers comfortable with the idea of guiding a 50 ton beast of death and destruction from Point A to Point B. The driver has the best seat in the tank--it's a real seat. And it leans back. Like, allll the way back. We're literally lying down, and it's padded, and pretty great. I loved it. The steering column is a T-bar that we adjust that ends up sitting basically in our laps. And we look through periscope blocks that let us see through the hatch and all the terrain and stuff. Three separate blocks, that are not connected, and only have limited adjustability. So, we can't see a whole lot. A tank crew has 4 people in it, and so our tanks had 3 raw scrubs like me plus a Tank Commander (TC). These were Sergeants or Staff Sergeants whose job was to turn us into barely competent at our job. We rotated through being the driver, so we'd all get a chance to play and have fun (gunner and loader had nothing to shoot that day, and so it was a bit boring for them.) I drew last driver, so sat through the first two guys. Finally, it was my turn. There was no real defined beginning or end to the course, we just drove when and as the TC told us. So, when it was time to swap drivers, we just pulled off to the side, popped it in park, and then switched. Finally, it was my turn. So, I hop into the driver's hole, get everything all adjusted and set up. We're atop this road thing that's raised up and curved a bit in the middle, and has shallow ditches on either side of it. TC tells me to hold the left track and reverse, 'cuz we were gonna turn around go back the way we came from. I...may have been a little excited, 'cuz I gunned it. Only for a second or two. So the TC yells at me to be more gentle, so I'm thinking, "right, right. Cool. You got this." I say stupid mantras like that to myself all the time, especially when learning a new skill. So anyway, there we are, and he tells me to move out--gently. So, I just give it a little bit of gas, and nothing happens. So I give it more, and we move like an inch. TC's now yelling at me, telling me to take it out of park, and blah blah blah. I look down, and it's not in park at all, so I try saying it must be stuck in back. It's not like I can see anything, but all that makes sense to me. I don't hear anything back from him, but he didn't tell me to stop, so I try again. This time, though, I turned the T-bar so that we'd make a hard left and gunned it full throttle. There was an immediate *POP* sound from behind to my left as the tank shot forward and then began immediately rattling horrifically (instead of the pleasant rattling that happens when the track is actually on the road wheels and everything is working fine.) TC is yelling at me more now, so I do what he basically says, which is to lock down the tank (park, power down, etc.) and then hop out. When I get out, I see how ridiculous it all is. The left-side track has come off the road-wheels entirely, and is all twisted up inside of them and down. And I can see where we'd been parked, it's just a super shallow little culvert thing; I'm pretty sure that my car at the time (an '88 Beretta) would have had no problem getting in and out of it. There was nothing for the tank to have been stuck on--I still don't know what happened. So, anyway, TC is cussing up a storm. The others are laughing, 'til they learn that to fix this problem, we'd have to pull track. This is hard to explain why it's so terrible, but basically we'd have to manually pull apart sections of the track and then put them back together on the tank. Track is heavy. Each side weighs a ton. Literally. And the stuff is always rusted on, broken bolts, fused down tight in some places, so it's nearly impossible to get apart. A storming nightmare. Five minutes after this started, another tank drove by and stopped to help. They were still early in their rotation for the day, and had just had one guy finish driving, but other two still to go. When they found out that I hadn't got my driving time in yet, I got swapped with the guy who had. So, I broke the tank, in the most annoying and painful way to fix in the field that is still possible to do so, and then was ordered to leave and have fun instead of staying to fix it. That was the first tank I broke that day...but not the last.

Imagine a battery-operated clock. Now imagine that the battery is a Smokestone instead. If you're interested in the internal mechanics of the clock that make it work, I don't think anyone can help you. But if you just want to know what it looks like? There's really three basic requirements for a clock to have that have remained fairly constant for at least a couple thousand years, even as the way they have been used and created have changed dramatically. You need something to point to the current time, you need something that causes the pointer to move, and you need a way to power that consistently and reliably. Sundials have the dial itself remain static, and use the sun and rotation of the Earth for the other two. Other clocks use gears to slowly change the time, powered by mechanical energy (winding up the clock/watch, use of the pendulum in grandfather clocks, dripping water, etc.), or electricity (yay batteries!) Rosharans have simply added magic to a method of powering the clock, so I would still imagine the gears to remain a necessity. I personally use a a near-Renaissance era clock for my imaginings.

Keep in mind that they also refer to all birds as chickens. So there may actually be weasels, ferrets, etc., but the people don't know enough to differentiate them. The quote from Adolin's POV seems to support this, with a lion being described as mink-link. It's interesting to see how widespread mink or mink-likes were, though, for there to be some kind of tradition of wearing their pelts, and surprise at them not all having been hunted. In an environment that would be very unfriendly to their existence.

I can break anything...in ways that said thing has never been broken before. Everything from computers and printers to doors and tanks, radios and mailboxes and more.

That still doesn't explain why there was no record of anything left to say that that's why they were doing it. There is no control to prevent Radiants in the future, thus necessitating the whole thing all over again. If you told me that in order to save the universe, I had to murder my best and closest friend in the entire world--I might not do it. If I did, you can be damnation sure that I'd make sure that it would protect the universe forever. One great way to do this would be to, oh, leave a message with the spren that stuck around. If the Stormfather said, "If you Bond and become a Radiant, then there will be Desolations," don't you think that would be a kinda big deal? Or they could have started a secret society to preserve the knowledge of how to look for Radiants, find them, and let them know what they were causing. Instead, at best, they left a book--and one with not enough copies to last into the future. If they were going to do that, I'd think at least a hundred million copies would ensure that the knowledge would probably last at least a thousand years. Maybe you're right and they did none of those things--but it seems like sheer folly to plot the murder of your best friend to save the world, and not prevent others from having to do the exact same thing in the future.

Amaram's motives are clearly laid out, and not mysterious. We see his thoughts/explanations as he is talking to another of his order, as well as inside his own head. If there is any benefit to having the voidbringers back aside from the Desolation/catastrophe/crisis that they bring with them, Amaram does not note it. This facet of your argument, while small, is flawed and should not be included. Please know that I am not trying to be mean, or rude, or to discourage you in any way. I'm just trying to point out holes in your argument/theory, so that they can be fixed/corrected and create a stronger, more coherent whole. I realize I'm a fairly blunt person, and I have a tendency to state my beliefs as self-evident facts, and I also love to argue; and I don't always notice when I have crossed from good fun to accidentally insulting (which is why I am including this paragraph as explanation). I don't actually disagree with all of your conclusion. I firmly believe that whatever Gavilar was working towards, he personally believed it to be the salvation of Roshar--and he may even have been right. It's possible that this includes the return of the voidbringers, but I think that them returning is a side-effect of saving Roshar, not the cause. ie, sometimes you have to tear down what exists in order to make something better, and in the case of a prison, that may mean bad people running around for a time. And sometimes the permanent fix isn't made at the time before, but it can be made now. (Blah blah, Sauron, wring-wraiths, the One Ring, etc. Also strong analogy to basic over-arching plot of the WoT series and Forsaken. And a very large number of other epic fantasy series. Ancient evil that was delayed before and is slowly wakening only to be defeated by the plucky heroes is a very common trope, after all.) (I'm no longer sure I'm making sense, so just hitting post and going to bed now.)

That's just it though--you're seeing a by-product of his plan, and saying that's what he's trying to do. If he could dance a jig and return Vorinism to dominance in the land, that's what he'd do, and skip the whole voidbringer/Desolation thing. It's a small difference from what you've said, but if we're going to ascribe motives to what people are doing to determine if there's something larger going on, I think it's important to be completely correct

This is...not entirely correct. Amaram wants a return of Vorin dominance. He thinks this will happen if there is another Desolation, because that will force the Heralds to return. So, while he may be acting to bring back voidbringers, it's not at all because he is on Odium's side, or even intending to ally with them at all. Other groups that may or may not be looking to the return of the voidbringers and Desolation all believe that they have a way to profit/benefit from it. People have been using imaginary devils/demons to unify people under their rule for basically as long as human civilization has existed--imagine if those devils/demons were real and falling from the sky. There's a whole lot of people who seek power who would absolutely use that, and might be foolish enough to think that it's a good thing. I do not see any way that those who make "first contact" with the voidbringers after their return are set to benefit in any way. From what I can see, all the groups (with exception of the Ghost Bloods who remain mysterious and unknown) seek to use the fact of the voidbringer return, or that which comes with the voidbringers, to their own advantage, Also, the best villains are those that have real motivations, and are able to realize victory even when defeated. Sanderson is pretty good at creating villains that are both of these things, so if any of the groups have motivations as simple as, "SUMMON ODIUM TO DESTROY THE WORLD!!!! HUZZAH!!!" I'll be shocked.

So...um...this is a bit personal and awkward, so I'm just gonna come out and say it: My beard is lacking in the whole...Invested...department. How do you fix this? Is there a beardmancer I can visit? I mean, it's not like there's anything wrong with it...it's just...solidly mediocre. I did try spicing it up a bit by applying fire, but that just hurt my face and caused the entire office to panic. I'm willing to do literally anything that does not take time, effort, or energy on my part. Can you help? (This is the "Ask a Beard-guy" column, right?)