shawnhargreaves

Eshonai can be both a flashback character, and also an active ongoing participant as a future Parshendi Ancestor. Death isn't necessarily permanent for them, and we saw that yellow spren separating from her corpse. I expect that to combine with some other body to create a new kind of Fused.

Raoden and Sarene Siri and Susebron Wax and Steris Dalinar and Evi Shallan and Adolin Brandon sure does enjoy the pattern of a couple who meet after a marriage between them has already been arranged for political reasons, yet who go on to develop a real relationship and fall in love! Counter examples, where a romance developed spontaneously, are significantly rarer: Vin and Elend Sazed and Tindwyl Dalinar and Navani I doubt there's any great significance to this, but found it interesting when I counted these up just now. Unpublished works:

These things aren't mutually exclusive.

This. We've seen Dalinar and Adolin do ridiculous jumps in Plate, and turn out just fine. And we saw Kaladin literally fly right through that same storm. We don't know how Stormform compares to Windrunning, but it seemed like a reasonable bet that (badass magic) > (destructive power of storm). Also, we had WoB that Eshonai would be a future focus character. And surely he wouldn't build her up so much only to cut off that arc early on? I have to say, kudos to Brandon if she really is gone though. Nice way to follow up a "y'all thought she was dead when she wasn't" fakeout, by doing the exact opposite! (fwiw though, I suspect Eshonai will still have a part to play in spite of being dead)

Oh yeah. Dang, you're right. Another good theory bites the dust :-)

Super interesting point. I'm not 100%, but I don't think I remember seeing this. It would be a very Brandonesque twist to have something important where Shardblades don't work the same for Listeners as humans, but we missed that because everyone assumed of course it would be the same. There are potentially related mysteries like where did the Listeners get all those Shards in the first place?

I don't think that has to be a literal usage of the word. dictionary.com gives 5 definitions, including the biological meaning but also: "an object, idea, style, or occurrence serving as a prototype, forerunner, or inspiration to a later one" and "a person who serves as an influence or model for another; one from whom mental, artistic, spiritual, etc., descent is claimed."

(seizing last chance to post wild theories before my book arrives tomorrow) My initial reactions to Interlude 3: Nooo! I like Eshonai - she can't be dead. I doubt this will be a fakeout death, though. Brandon has said he intends to go easy on those for a while. But Brandon also said that Eshonai will be the focal character of a future book? But but he also also mentioned that a future book might focus on someone who is no longer alive??? arghhh! But upon further reflection, it seems to me that within this same episode Ulim told us exactly what comes next for Eshonai. Key quotes: Taking this literally, the listener ancestors are dead, yet somehow still active and pulling important strings. Maybe they all become cognitive shadows? Or there could be something uniquely listener-y going on - but either way it appears that many if not all listeners have a way to hang around after death with continuing influence. So the door is open for Eshonai to be both dead and an important ongoing character, without requiring a fakeout or unique circumstances leading to her resurrection. Crackpot time: This episode confirmed a long standing theory that listeners contain gemhearts. Other gemheart based Rosharan species are known to pupate, dramatically changing between forms that are barely recognizable as the same species. Listeners can change forms without pupating, but their different forms are all still recognizable as the same species. Could their lifecycle also include a larger transformation into something more significantly different? A big enough transformation that they count it as dying and being reborn - in which case the ancestors might not be cognitive shadowy at all. Main reason I think this might be true: we were told that the listener taboo about moving corpses came from the days when humans used to desecrate them in search of gemhearts, but this explanation stinks of misdirection (or at least not being the complete story). The other place we've seen people hacking into 'corpses' to get gemhearts is pupating chasmfiends. Could 'dead' listeners be the same? It would be classic Brandon foreshadowing to have sat a giant clue like that out in the open this whole time.

I agree that there seem to be strong parallels between Surgebinding, Voidbinding, and what we've seen so far of fabrials, but I'm not convinced by the Scadrial parallel. For one thing, Scadrial has three magic systems, not just two. Hemalurgy is powered by Ruin, Feruchemy by Preservation, and Allomancy is a blend of the two. That doesn't seem to match what we know about magic on Roshar. Surgebinding appears to be just one magic system, but with 10 variants, each of which is differently associated with some blend of Honor and Cultivation. There doesn't seem to be the same structure as on Scadrial, which would leave us to expect one system from Honor, another from Cultivation, plus a third that blends the two (also maybe an Honor+Odium blend, a Cultivation+Odium blend, and perhaps a blend of all three if the combinatorics are fully expanded?) It could be argued that each separate surge is its own magic system, but in that case Roshar has far more graduated blends than what we saw on Scadrial. Hemalurgy is an odd magic system in that it steals the powers of other systems, rather than having any specific capabilities of its own. When an Inquisitor burns steel, I'm not sure it's right to say they are using Hemalurgy to do this. Hemalurgy was used when they were first spiked (thus stealing the ability to burn steel from someone else) but at the point when they actually burn it, I think they are now using the stolen Allomantic power rather than Hemalurgy. So I'm not sure we can conclude anything more general from the fact that these stolen abilities stay basically the same.

Interesting. I read that bit as a parallel with the Dalinar's younger days, where he apparently also did a lot of personal slaughtering! I hope we'll learn more about this in Oathbringer, but it seems to me that the two of them started out in quite a similar place, from where they headed in different directions. If Dalinar can be redeemed from alcoholic warlord under thrall of the Thrill, why not Sadeas?

I'm increasingly thinking that the word "spren" is so vague as to be almost meaningless. We've seen a range from small weak mindless things, to Syl, all the way up to the Stormfather. I think spren just means physical representation of a primarily cognitive being, in the same way the word "animal" can mean any physical being from an ant to a human. The latest chapters do strongly suggest the Unmade could bond a human, but they also suggest the Unmade once were human (or perhaps listener). Hmm, does that mean a human could bond a Herald?

There are several things that don't make sense about this. Agree about the Odium-power-leading-to-healing feeling off. Also, how does Odium even have enough power on Roshar to produce a magical storm at all? My understanding is that he is not primarily invested here, thus why he has to influence people indirectly via the Unmade etc. Could the Everstorm be Cultivation power? Odium (presumably) is responsible for triggering it in some way, but big storm on Roshar going the opposite way to Honor's one and healing Listeners along the way strikes me as more Cultivationy than Odious...

I don't think humans are "bad guys" (or listeners either for that matter!) but I do agree they are probably the invading species. And I do wonder whether Odium was in some way responsible for introducing humans to Roshar. Not in a simple "I will bring bad to attack good" manner, but as a way to create conflict where both sides are sympathetic, yet the outcome is disastrous for both.

Level of responsibility for the actions of your ancestors, and the way consequences of those actions reverberate down the ages, is a fascinating philosophical and moral question. Extremely relevant to present day issues like race relations in the USA, so I'm looking forward to seeing how Brandon develops these ideas. Kaladin didn't make that point to his captors because he's not much of a philosopher. He cares deeply about what is moral, but doesn't spend much time reading about or discussing the theoretical background to such things. Shallan/Jasnah, on the other hand... interesting future conversations coming there perchance? I completely agree. First he got to know one Listener, treated them honorably and earned their trust. Now he got to know a group of them, after which we learned that the yellow spren was advocating for Kaladin. I don't know how it will play out, but these experiences seem important both for how Kaladin deals with the Listeners, and I suspect ultimately how they will treat him.

Re-reading WoK and WoR in preparation for next week, I realized I've been making some inadvertent assumptions that I'm not very happy about. This isn't so much a theory as a late realization of reader bias... First some things I am pretty confident are true: There are two shards invested on Roshar: Honor and Cultivation. A third Shard, Odium, has influenced Roshar in important ways but is not fully invested there. Surgebinding is a mix of Honor and Cultivation. Different KR orders are different blends between the two (eg. Windrunners are mostly/all Honor, while Edgedancers) are mostly/all Cultivation). The KR orders were created in imitation of the Heralds. This all has to do with the Oathpact, Desolations, and the Voidbringers in ways that we don't yet understand. These things are Big and Important. And now some things that I've been assuming without having stopped to think much about them: The Oathpact and Heralds were created by Honor (why else would they be called Honorblades, right?) The Desolations were in some way part of an epic conflict between Honor and Odium. Cultivation is good (because that's like, gardening, and I like vegetables...) Cultivation must therefore be basically on Honor's side. Mixed magics and all. She probably helped him with that big fighting-Odium thing. So hold up, thinks I today. As far as we can tell, Surgebinding is powered equally by both Shards (to differing extents per order) - so why would all of the Heralds have more to do with Honor than Cultivation? Why am I assuming this must be a case of Odium vs. man-god, with woman-god reduced to a less important, helping out around the edges type role? Unquestioned implicit bias going on here at all? :-) Now, this is where an actual theory would go if I had one. Which I don't. Instead, I will note that now I bother to think about this more carefully, it seems to me that a full Shard like Cultivation is probably overflowing with goals and strategems and irons in the fire that we haven't seen yet. And that these goals/strategems are probably not identical to those of Honor (they could even be opposed, but more likely run perpendicular in some areas). And that of the things we have already seen, there's probably a lot of Cultivation influence going on as well as Honor and Odium influence. I think I've been underestimating Cultivation.

Even on Earth where wood is common and easily available, musical instruments are usually made with the highest grade cuts of rare and expensive varieties (eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosewood). So I think we can still have cellos - but the best sounding ones probably have to be imported from the Shin. More expensive than the wood would be getting enough horsehair to make a violin or cello bow. Unlike the instrument itself, that needs replacing on a regular basis, and we keep hearing about how expensive horses are on Roshar. Ryshadium-hair bows, though, anyone? I imagine the Listener drums as some kind of clay pot instrument like an udu: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5QCRenYQCo

I thought the version Tor posted was disappointingly unrealistic.

Yes, but... I suspect Renarin has always had rather more confidence than those around him give credit for. We've only seen him through the eyes of others, who are mostly expecting him to be like Adolin and thus perceive him as coming up short. His conversations with Dalinar during WoK do show some uncertainty about what role he should fill, but my sense is he'd pretty much figured that out during WoR. Choosing to join Bridge 4 because he wanted to gain that experience, and even more so choosing to help Adolin in the duel, weren't exactly the actions of someone who lacked internal confidence! So, I agree these new developments are important, but I think they'll be more about others catching up to how he already perceived himself.

Brandon cameo: confirmed!

It's an inevitable reaction to realizing how much secret stuff Brandon hides in these books. First time Sanderson reader: Reads book Wow, that was really good! Goes online to learn more about it "omg there is so much neat stuff in there that I totally missed" <feels foolish> Experienced Sanderson reader: Reads book Every time a new character, object, idea, piece of history, etc, is introduced, rushes online to post all possible crackpot theories about who or what that might really be Eventually, more is revealed 99.99% of the crackpot theories lead nowhere, but inevitably (by virtue of all possible theories having being expanded out and posted) some few will turn out to be correct "Aha, I called it!" <feels smugly satisfied>

Do you have a source for this? Unless I missed something, I think you're making several BIG assumptions that may not be warranted. So far we've seen a couple of things that might be voidbringers, but don't know for sure what those are. We assume they were Odium's agents, but don't know that for sure either. We do know (from Dalinar's visions) that voidbringers come along with the desolations, and that they were very destructive, but I don't think we know what the end goal of the desolations, or of Odium, is (those last may or may not be the same). I've been thinking recently about the difference between Ruin and Odium. I think there is a danger of coloring our reactions to Odium by what we know about Ruin, but should remember these are different intents. "Destroy all humans" is what Ruin would want! Odium just wants to hate all humans (and all listeners too for that matter). Hatred works best if you sustain it and feed it without ever completely destroying what you hate. And it works best of all if you have two or more sides to participate in hating each other at the same time (humans and listeners, anyone?)

This timeline doesn't work. Odium splintered Devotion and Dominion before the events covered in Elantris, so was long gone by the time of the Elantrians being shut in behind that "wall". I do support the idea of Odium being the one who brought humans to Roshar, but I don't think Shallan's story is an Elantris reference.

This sounds right to me. The wording "who loved me" is a big clue.

Shallan told a fascinating story, which seems big picture significant and slightly less obscure than the tales we heard in earlier Stormlight books (eg. the Kaladin/Hoid collaboration about Fleet). There are obvious parallels to the Prometheus legends that occur in so many Earth cultures (climbing up and stealing fire from the gods) but with a massive twist: Is this a legend about the first humans arriving on Roshar? Perhaps in Shinovar, where mountains (= wall) initially blocked them from the highstorms? Or is it a story about the first time humans bonded with spren? Or was it originally a listener story? Either way, the "OMG we are the evil ones" realization strikes me as an important bit of foreshadowing. Particularly coming in such close proximity to the Dalinar chapter where we got the clearest description so far of just how scary the Thrill is, and how completely a human can be controlled by it. Wild theory: is this is telling us that the voidbringers are corrupted humans, not listeners at all?

I don't think so, because none of the other Alethi were shocked by anything that happened in this flashback. I actually found that the most shocking thing about it! Dalinar got so carried away that he killed a bunch of his own men, and Gavilar was just like, "dude, nice job there, we won, yay..." Which makes me think that whatever happened later on must have been REALLY REALLY bad.