Shaggai

Words of Radiance, page 474 or thereabouts:

Diana Wynne Jones is just amazing, even if you don't read YA.

The thing with the Windrunners is that their purpose is to protect, and only protect. Even if the world would be better off if someone died, a Windrunner wouldn't be able to do it. There are similar flaws in all of the moral codes. The point of them is that they work together, and cover up the flaws of the others. None of the Orders are meant to exist on their own.

I'm not taking any one view of the Shattering. There are multiple different ways that the extra power could have existed. But one way of viewing the Shattering is like dropping a piece of glass, perhaps one that has been weakened along certain lines. It will break into a few large pieces, but quite a bit of it will break into much smaller pieces. The original members would each have one of these pieces. It's not enough to make a god, unless you gather it all up into one place, but it's still something.

No rule against it, since this forum doesn't have spoiler rules, but that format is a bit hard to read. Anyway, TLR or the Steel Ministry could easily have made those up. It contributes to the impression of him as a god.

Kaladin isn't the one who diagnosed Renarin with epilepsy.

It's possible, definitely, and there are plenty of other possibilities. Maybe they'll end the Desolation, but in the second half they'll completely beat Odium. I still think they'll lose, for other reasons.

But has he? Sure, in the books so far we've mostly been looking at Kaladin and Dalinar when we're exploring the moral issues. But there's the whole matter of Taravangian. I expect that we'll learn a lot more if/when we get a Taravangian book. Really, it's all determined by how it works out. If the first five end with the Radiants winning, sure, that would be true. But if they fail (which I consider more likely. Why have another series if they've already won?), it gets more complex.

The red and violet spren are almost certainly stormspren, a kind of Voidspren. The chanting was probably related to the Parshendi taking stormform. As for the giants, the Unmade might fit. But then there's the fact that Shallan noticed something in a completely different chapter. Maybe she noticed something different? If the two incidents are separate, that would go a long way towards explaining things. Another possibility is that there's at least one of the Unmade who's continuously within the Highstorm. They're supposedly "personifications of different kinds of destruction", so it would make sense that one of them exists within the stormwinds. Stormspren are probably an offshoot of this Unmade, since there isn't really another coherent explanation as to why they would be Voidish. This same Unmade would have been what Shallan saw. The other figure or figures (I interpreted Kaladin's description as a whole procession of gigantic, glowing things, but it's possible that there were only two in that case) would have been another Unmade, drawn by the creation of Voidbringers.

She might just have been a devout Vorin and regarded the Radiants as inherently corrupted by the Recreance.

There have also been a couple threads about Szeth, as well, and I think I recall a thread about the morality of the Oaths a while ago. Let me see if I can find it. Edit: Here is a thread about the Oaths. Here is a thread about the general morality. Both are dead, of course, so while this thread isn't totally original, it still has a point.

Even if the Intents didn't contradict each other, and weren't as strong as Shardic Intents, enough of them could render a person unable to act.

Only because he viewed them as a single thing. If someone attempted to pick up, say, Devotion, they would have to take the Splinters one by one, and they couldn't restore Devotion because they wouldn't have enough power.

He said "every day", though. If it were Breath, wouldn't he say "every week"? Stormlight would plausibly be required every day. Stormlight leaks, and less of it can be absorbed at one time (simply because of availability), so it would run out faster.

Clod?

That amount of damage would simply become the norm. People would just get used to it. It's terrible, but it's true.

It's possible that it's too difficult for one person to pick up all of the Splinters. If each one has its own minor Intent, the struggle of so many Intents could easily destroy the holder. That would effectively prevent anyone from challenging Odium. The members could also have obtained the power previously.

I don't think it would be censored, since it's probably practically impossible to track down. And even if you found it, how would you distinguish it from something else?

What is the Seventeenth Shard? We know that it's a Cosmere-spanning organization, and that it has connections to Hoid and a dragon. Other than that, we know very little. We don't know its purpose, although there is much speculation, we don't know how large it is, we don't know why it's called the Seventeenth Shard. The last of these is probably the most important one, given the information we already have. There's no way to tell how large it is, and the reasoning behind the name can give away information about the purpose. My theory is this: When Adonalsium Shattered, it didn't Shatter neatly. The Sixteen Shards were created out of Adonalsium, but a significant fraction of Its power did not become part of them. Perhaps this was a result of Adonalsium Investing Itself on Yolen, perhaps Adonalsium had created Splinters previously, or perhaps the Shattering was imperfect. Whatever the cause, large amounts of power remained. Perhaps even Shardic levels of power. The power that remained, unShattered, would have been dangerous, especially in the hands of certain of the Shards. It would also have been, for the most part, conveniently located on Yolen. These two factors would have come together and resulted in the creation of an organization to contain the last remaining fragments of Adonalsium, for the safety of the Cosmere. It is likely that this organization took on the power, to keep it safe. The organization also took its name from these fragments, a seventeenth piece of Adonalsium. The Seventeenth Shard. Over time, this organization changed. The Seventeenth Shard was safe, and none of the Shards had come for it. The immediate focus of the organization was pointless. But the root cause - the protection of the Cosmere - remained. Various members used their power to travel between the Shardworlds, doing what they could to contain the more dangerous of the Shards. A few scraps of information given to Kelsier, helping him to overthrow the Lord Ruler, setting in motion a chain of events that resulted in the permanent neutralization of Ruin. Stories told to Kaladin, nudging him to act in certain ways. Various other interferences, all helping the Cosmere in the long run. So the essence of my theory is this: The Seventeenth Shard is the name given to that of Adonalsium's power which was not incorporated into the Shards. The organization of the same name was created to prevent the usage of that power for bad purposes. Over time, the organization shifted and became dedicated to the overall protection of the Cosmere. Various other things: This is why Hoid is so hard to kill, and has his specific limitations. He's holding a large Splinter, probably with an Intent which is either incompatible with violence or, combined with his history, drives him not to kill. Hoid's Intent is why he's doing things that the Seventeenth Shard disapprove of. He has to act in certain ways, but those ways tend to not be the same as the ways that the Seventeenth Shard would prefer him not to. We can expect to see other people with large amounts of Adonalsium-based power. The dragon(s), for example. There will probably be others as well. So, what say ye?

Thank you as well. I'm generally of the "the ends justify the means" persuasion as well, so it was good for me to have reasonable grounds to argue against that sort of position.

Either pronoun is okay. I don't care what people call me on the Internet, as long as it isn't insulting. My profile pics are not going to be at all representative of me, since I pick them based on how cool I think they look.

Gavilar was secretly a worldhopper from Taldain.

Yeah, I forgot about this. I waive my rights to the turn.

Yes, that was my point.

I don't know about the pepper spray thing. What sort of thing could you use the painknife for that you couldn't use pepper spray for?