Maffu17

Nah to all the poo-pooers, i've always thought they were the gemhearts of their ancestors. That's why both the Parshmen and Parshendi are so fussy about taking care of the corpses of the fallen. Throughout most of my re-readings of the Way of Kings I had the idea that the war to decimate the population of the Parshendi was futile, judging by how crabs breed with thousands of offspring each. I had assumed the Parshendi were harvesting the Gemhearts so they could cut them down to 'Parshendi' size and use them to create new members of their own race. Making the humans believe they were having an impact on their population when really they were able to keep their numbers stable. edit added spoiler thingy

I guess from what Kaladin saw in the chasm during the highstorm that the Chasmfiends are active during the storm, and pupate afterwards. So the shell doesn't need to conduct the stormlight. I'm assuming they extract minerals from what they eat in order to add to the size of the Gemheart inside them, e.g. Chromium and others in the case of Emerald Gemhearts. And during the pupation they are growing their Gemheart as well as their physical form to enable them to survive the increase in volume. These discussions always bring me back to the wonderfully hidden comment Syl made while Kaladin was in the slave-wagon

Aww man, I only ventured outside the "Words of Radiance" thread today and saw this.. I thought I was alone in the UK. I'm in West Yorkshire but I would have loved to meet you guys, did anyone take pictures or make a video? did anyone bring a barbie doll spray-painted blue, pop it on their shoulder and talk to it all day? If only i'd noticed this 3 days ago, bah!

Is the word queer OK again now? I'm English and to me it still sounds wrong, but I'm not someone with their finger on the pulse. Here we seem to use gay as the politically correct word. I don't have any gay friends and still look quickly away if i happen upon gay porn while surfing. But I would be 100% cool with kaladin doing whatever / whoever he likes, I trust Brandon will find the true path for him whichever it is.

Have you been baiting and teasing him with juicy titbits of information? e.g. I try to appeal to my programmer friends by using warbreaker as an example for how similar the magic system is to creating a program.

Sooooo impressed. I think you're at least at +10 very good work on your infection rate too. I love the idea of a household discussing plots and theorising together and the outsider mother being peer-pressured into joining in

Oh and yea the 99 desolations is a lie. 9 would be more accurate. Any herald who can withstand 99 cycles of torture isn't going to balk at a hundredth.

Technological growth is always stunted when magic is around. Most of the scientists on Roshar we've met seem to be too hung up on fabrials to bother with anything as mundane as steam. Milestones such as the telegraph, semaphore and telephone are overlooked because of span-reeds for example. Also its a very different world, I'm not sure if I've seen any coal around and the trees with their crem hardened bark would make logging a lot of trouble. The Shin mentioned mining though so there are similarities to our own development. However the ability to soulcast may have hampered advanced metallurgy (as Rysn's Babsk mentions they can carve wood and soulcast it into swords). Remember the Herald talked about teaching the populace to craft with bronze, this is a big clue to how advanced they usually find society after returning from damnation. If i wanted to troll i could say the largest contributor to stagnation is religion and the repression of man. [[Removed the rest of this paragraph as judging by the downvotes I may have annoyed some people, apologies, I was aiming for light humour and took it too far]] But joking aside, being dissuaded from trying to predict the future, half the population being illiterate, and the sexual prejudices behind the callings all point to religion being a large hindrance. Additionally a more difficult agricultural process, and the Unmade interferences like the Thrill all conspire to hold back the tide of progress. In the interest of fairness I have to undermine myself by pointing out that "as late as 1841, 33% of all Englishmen and 44% of Englishwomen signed marriage certificates with their mark as they were unable to write". And there's a huge case for argueing that our own religions were far more destructive to our worlds own development.

Me too, do you mean the one that sounds like Drayi?

We saw it in Dalinar's vision when he was atop a single stone pillar surrounding by emptiness. The way I see it, each time the storms collide they cause massive damage (Plateau's spinning in the sky) and leave behind nothing but broken rock, now imagine ten thousand collisions across the surface of Roshar and you have the landscape from the vision. At least in my assumptions.

Okay on reflection, it was only 8 days ago, but I was googling Julia Sets for hours that night, combining with geological features, galaxies, patterns on shells and fossils, and all the time it was staring me in the face! I wish I could grow an extra leg so I could kick myself with more efficiency.

@ Peter That's so unfair! I was watching that Julia Set animation weeks ago! (April 12th according to google history to be precise!) Curse my eyes! Can we get an explanation as to how the incorrectly placed numbers had an impact? Or was that a separate unrelated easter egg?

Shinovar has mountains to the west too, whoever designed it seemed to have some prophetic ability. Although without all the other land to sap it's power and coming fresh from the sea I don't know if the mountains will be enough. We haven't seen any Parshmen in Shinovar yet, but that doesn't mean they don't have them.

upvote for the use of Harold which made me giggle.

It's seems counter-intuitive to me to label every thread and post with ["Spoiler"]. Why is the policy that spoilers should be marked, and not that the whole board should be marked [spoilers]? We are after all discussing ideas on what we think the future has in store, or mining away at the text of the book to find the hidden gems of information. Haven't the greater majority of people here have already read WoR, most more than once, then surely we shouldn't be catering to the minority. I'm aware as most people are that if you don't want a book to be spoiled you DON'T go on the internet while reading it and type in the name of the book, and if you must for whatever reason, the very last place you should go is the forum of a fansite. Just wondered where everyone stood on this, as I get weary of reading posts pointing out there are spoilers in other posts, or titles. PS and in the end everyone dies.

I wondered what they're going to do about trying to stop all the Parshmen in the world getting transformed by the oncoming Everstorm, Kaladin is going to hearthstone so he's out. Giving Windrunner powers to Rlain and having him race across the world gathering the Parshmen and keeping them Voidsprenless is actually a good idea. Judging that Eshonai had to go out into a storm to transform into Stone Form i'm just hoping that being inside buildings when the Everstorm comes will be enough to protect the Parshmen, that way the whole of society won't collapse early on in book 3 with the first full passing of the Everstorm. Meaning somebody will have to actively go around exposing pockets of Parshmen one storm at a time. Are the red-lightning spren that are the head of the Everstorm the same as the captured "stormspren" Eshonai and the others used to transform? Maybe Sigzil would be the better choice for traversing the world and securing the Parshmen as he already has great knowledge of the geography and cultures involved.

Nicely done +8 and +3, if we keep spreading like this we'll be able to form a religion in a few years, tax breaks and extra holidays here we come!

Patrick - you missed a bit: "Although there's painspren on my chest" My brain is currently whurring trying to convert more songs, nice post made me smile

You leave Peter alone! He holds the secret of the map, we must please him. We must.

I think Peter meant we were getting closer with the picture of my dogs back. Incidentally it's good to see Shinovar is shielded from the West.

You get an upvote for spreading the word so diligently traceria. The people I know are very stubborn about recommendations and prefer to find things on their own, which can be frustrating as I have to resist blurting out all the cool stuff and feed them titbits surreptitiously. Maybe it's not a curse, afterall they mostly went on to bigger and better things, maybe Sanderson was the spur that pushed them onwards, Kaladin's determination or Jasnah's confidence and certainty. Curse or boon i'll never stop telling everyone about him, nevar!

How many people have read got into Brandon, specifically the Stormlight Archive on your personal recommendation? I have only 5 so far, but I think the Stormlight Archive might be cursed: The first person who read it on my recommendation was a colleague who left my work to become an Architect. The second person left to back into education. The third emigrated to Australia. The fourth was an online gamer friend who had a life crisis and hasn't been back on his Steam account for over 500 days. The fifth was a female colleague who has also left work. I'm currently trying to get my 2 new gamer friends to read the WoK as they're both big fans of fantasy but they are resisting me, and with the curse in effect i'm not sure I should try too hard lest they fall into the sky to be lost forever. Anyway, was just wondering how many fans have been kickstarted by fellow 17thShard members>( and if the curse is striking anyone else?)

I think decayform be under the dustbringers as the WOR ars arcanum says division= destruction & decay

Hmm I dunno Rubies are called Firemarks not Sparkmarks. Diamonds Clearmarks. Sapphire Skymarks. The names of the others reflect the colour of the light they emit.

Do we know that Warbreaker was happening at the same time as the Stormlight archive? Couldn't it be set say 15,000 years prior to the events of WoK? Enough to allow a few cycles of desolations. I always assumed all the planets will converge to fight Odium hence the space travel from the Scadrial but that will be at least a couple of centuries in the future from AoL. So unless there's an established cosmere timeline i've not come across the Heralds could be returned. Although it does seem unlikely for the reasons others have stated above. You still get an up vote though