Harrycrapper

Given the importance of Nightblood to the plan, one has to wonder how involved Endowment was in this.

There's so many odd factors to the state of Shallan's Ideal level and Lightweavers in general, it's almost impossible to pinpoint where she's really at and therefore where she's going. If not for Testament, I'd say she's already at the 5th Ideal equivalent for Lightweavers. But given that, it's possible that one or more of the Truths we've seen her speak have been to Testament. Even before RoW, I'd never really base any supposition on Shallan's Radiant path, too many extra factors and unreliable narration make it really hard to know anything as a fact as it relates to her. I'm starting to even doubt whether they have to swear "Life before death, strength before weakness, journey before destination." As for Windrunners, I'd say it's going to be along the lines of them choosing who to protect. It goes back to that scene in WoK where Lirin chose to save Roshone and let Riller die. Lirin first had to accept that he couldn't save Riller and had to choose to let him die to save the one he knew he could. The 4th Oath seems like it's more for accepting when you've failed to protect someone. These seem similar, but Kaladin wasn't forced to choose between saving Teft and doing something else. He was faced with the fact that he could not protect him. If it had just been Riller who was wounded and Lirin failed, that would relate more to the 4th Ideal. But he not only decided he could not save Riller, he immediately stopped using his time on him and moved on to Roshone. I have a feeling Kaladin will reach the 5th Ideal when he is forced to save someone he knows he can while letting someone else that he isn't sure he can save die(or leaving them to whatever fate awaits). I think it would be quite interesting if I got that right as that scene with Lirin would embody every oath a Windrunner can make. Protecting those who cannot protect themselves: Preforming lifesaving surgery on those who could not protect themselves from the whitespine. Protecting even those you hate: Saving Roshone's life even though he could have easily cut that artery and no one would ever know. I will accept that there are those I cannot save: Acknowledging that Riller was beyond saving. I will prioritize those that I can save when I determine it is likely that there are those I cannot: Making Riller comfortable and focusing on saving Roshone despite what Kaladin or Roshone thought. Edit: Had an interesting thought. What if he has to decide he cannot save Moash and has to kill him to protect someone Moash is going to kill.

Also, Sand Mastery doesn't really entail holding any investiture either, you just form a connection through the water in your body to an organism on a piece of sand that can be charged with investiture and control that sand with your mind. Though, I wonder if Kelsier and the Heralds also have these benefits considering their souls are infused with investiture just like a Returned is. The question there being, are they equally invested or does Endowment give the Returned considerably more than is strictly necessary? Technically, it only takes 1 Breath to make a Lifeless, but they have considerably less sapience than any of the aforementioned Cognitive Shadows.

That's not exactly what I meant. Those books are standalone with their own world and characters, some of which matriculate onto Roshar for the events of the Stormlight Archive. Not to mention, Warbreaker was released before Stormlight and is set before it. Prequels by definition are stories set before something that has already been released. Anyway, I'm talking about stories set on Roshar before the current Stormlight books based on events we've heard about but not really seen in detail.

It's definitely possible that Odium used the fact that humans with Radiant powers destroyed their last planet and which inevitably landed them in the horrible Desolation cycle to convince some humans to support him. That could be the source of the belief that the Radiants betrayed mankind. I'm getting close to that vision in my re-read of WoK. I didn't have time to do a series re-read before RoW so I'm doing all 4 now that I've done my first pass at RoW. I'll come back here if there's any useful insights I glean. And I doubt Brandon will ever write prequels for Stormlight, but who knows maybe Stormlight will get as popular as Game of Thrones one day and they make shows that cover content that Brandon doesn't have time to write.

There isn't exactly a clear timeline to the gem archives. Things we know for certain is that they're all before the Recreance ended(which keep in mind may not have been a singular event, it could have been spread out over time) and that some have to of come before and after the imprisoning of Ba-Ado-Mishram. There are three major events that we know come in a particular order and some of the gem archives can be placed specifically and some not. The earliest ones we can be sure of are the Truthwatcher ones where they lay out their plan to imprison B-A-M. Then there are ones which are likely the aftermath of that event where they discuss how the tower has begun to fail. Then finally there are the ones where the Radiants have begun to debate and then decide to abandon the tower. Then there's one that contained this message "The enemy makes another push toward Feverstone Keep. I wish we knew what it was that had them so interested in that area. Could they be intent on capturing Rall Elorim?" That one is rather strange. Others pointed out before that the Radiants were fighting something from Odiums forces near Feverstone Keep right before the Recreance vision. As far as we know, the Listeners were the only parsh that escaped the transformation into slave form as a result of the B-A-M imprisonment. But obviously the imprisonment had to of occurred before the Recreance could begin. One possibility I can think of is human forces being led by an Unmade. The only other one is that some parsh did not get turned into slave form and the Radiants there were hunting down the remaining parsh loyal to Odium(or similarly being led by an Unmade).

Ah, I keep forgetting that, nevermind.

I'm not sure where OP is getting that and while it's technically possible we have one indication that it is not the case.

I suspect that Nale and Ishar had more to do with the Recreance than we previously thought. They believed that if the Knights Radiant continued to exist that it would start another Desolation. Whether or not they knew what would happen to the spren, their goal was to ensure spren no longer wanted to bond humans. I suspect the non Highspren didn't know their kin were not victims of betrayal because all of the dead spren were in the physical realm and unable to directly communicate with the spren still in the cognitive realm. As for the Highspren, I suspect Nale made an agreement with them not to disclose that fact due to the responsibility the Skybreakers took on of making sure no other Radiant order started up again. That could also be the case for any non Highspren that might have known as well, other Heralds may have helped swear any who knew to secrecy. The spren that survived the recreance told the ones born after that it was all the humans' fault so that they wouldn't bond them. All the Honorspren had died so they didn't have anyone who could have possibly known and have spent 4000 years stewing in their hatred of humanity.

Yea Raboniel kinda just drops that fact like it was nothing, Navani was stunned. Ishar's experiments aside, I'm not sure anything can fully manifest in the physical realm and not exist in some capacity in the others. My guess is that manifesting as fabrials without a Nahel bond to anchor the spren's mind basically sends them into a deep coma.

I believe in RoW Raboniel tells Navani that old school fabrials like Soulcasters are just a Radiant spren manifesting in the physical realm as that fabrial. We don't know the specific mechanics but they were convinced to become fabrials instead of being trapped and forced into it.

I think it's a little more specific for Radiant. She created Radiant because she had to wield the Blade. I think she needed to create a persona that didn't have any memories of killing Testament so that she could wield the Blade without facing the Truth that she killed Testament. Which is also why Radiant didn't know about the final truth but Veil did.

Hey couple things here. First you put your post in your quote of me instead of the body of your post. Second, you got spoilers for Rhythm of War in there and those aren't allowed outside of RoW forums, please edit your post and highlight your entire post and click the little eye where all the other font options are and it will spoiler tag it. Make sure you also specify it's RoW spoilers. Edit: Ok, if KIngsdaughter is right just delete your post, I'm deleting my answer to be sure.

I'm not sure how long he's been there but he'd still need a pretty hefty amount of cadmium to manage that. He's been there long enough to have established the whole 16 day thing as a pattern. And I don't think the cadmium time slowing works on the scale you have there. 1 minute to 16 days sounds like way too much. IIRC Marasi and Wax were in her bubble for maybe 5 minutes with Miles and a few hours passed outside it. I'd need to go back and re-read AoL to be 100% sure but I know that it's on a scale of minutes inside the bubble = hours outside the bubble, not days outside the bubble. I'm not sure a savant would even be able to achieve that, though maybe a savant with Lerasium level allomantic strength, or swap savanthood for hemalurgically enhanced. Or just all three.

Oops, I forgot to check the character discussion section before making this. The clues we got were he comes out every 16 days and doesn't seem to need to eat or bathe. That should rule out any ordinary beings with no special powers or characteristics. Someone with the relevant Feruchemical and Allomantic powers could compound food and never need to eat, but that doesn't do much for the bathe part if they are still human(oid). I'm not sure what cosmere powers would allow someone who is mortal to not need to bathe. So that's why my guesses leaned towards Kandra or Sleepless. Though there's another possibility that I think the Shardcasters raised in one of their RoW reaction videos: A dragon.

I always thought that maybe Honor has something to do with Sja-Anat not being able to corrupt the Radiant spren. There's a new possibility though; the imprisoning of Ba-Ado-Mishram wounded The Sibling and was an event that affected other beings native to Roshar. That event could be why spren now become deadeyes when Radiants break their Oaths and why they can be corrupted by Sja-Anat now.

Actually this may be good news. They were all sold completely out a few days ago when I checked, but still up. They were supposed to be getting a new batch in before the holidays. Team Dragonsteel may be getting ready to repost those. I'm only missing Hero of Ages at this point and had placed an order at BYU and they sold out before they fulfilled mine, hopefully that doesn't get lost in the shuffle once they get a restock.

Hmmm I'd need to read the segment again but I believe when the Stormfather gives his info dump on the Heralds in OB he said that none of them managed to die in the 4000 years since they sent Taln back to Braize alone. At least, that's the implication of what he said, it might have been worded in such a way that it was technically inclusive of this scenario.

Actually, I don't think Rayse was going to tolerate him any more either even if Mr. T didn't take over. Moash specifically said to leave Kaladin alone and he would destroy himself. Lezian's actions directly lead to Kaladin overcoming his pain and swearing the 4th Ideal. Once Lezian interfered with what Odium and Moash were doing to Kaladin, he signed his own death sentence.

I assumed that at first as well, it would make sense. RoW has me even more confused on it, I don't even have a guess as to why it varies.

As far as we had seen before RoW, the Stormfather only accepted Windrunner Oaths and Dalinar's. In the case of Shallan it was Pattern accepting Truths. I don't think we saw anyone accept Szeth's in OB but I'm not 100% on that. Lift didn't seem to have anyone accept hers either. And we have not seen Renarin, Jasnah, or any of the Dustbringers swear theirs on screen. We hadn't even seen a Stoneward before RoW, let alone a POV.

I agree and disagree with you here on a couple different points. I'm not sure if Brandon had a particular scene in mind for a "major cosmere scene." There are a couple of possibilities but I'm guessing Thaidakar being Kelsier is probably it. While a decent amount of us had Kelsier pegged as a candidate for it, it was still kind of crazy to get confirmation. Overall, this was the most cosmere we've ever gotten in a single book. Objects from White Sand and Elantris played key roles in the two major plotlines and we got the names of 3 previously unknown Shards in the epigraphs. That is much more cosmere than we've gotten in any book up to this point. Regardless, I think it's unwise to base your opinion of a book on your pre release expectations. It's one of the dangers of frequenting forums like this and getting hyped up for a book(or movies, TV shows, and games for that matter). If you build up a version of the story you expect to see and it doesn't happen, it results in what you're feeling here. Because the ending you built up in your head didn't occur, you feel disappointed. What I do agree on is that the Venli/Eshonai chapters were the weakest part of this book. Like you said, there was a lot of information we already knew or could piece together with what we knew. I think this is somewhat a result of Brandon moving around which character's flashbacks show up in which book. I think if we swapped this book's flashbacks with WoR it would have worked a lot better. Arriving at Shallan swearing her 4th Truth after her flashbacks would have been more fulfilling than detouring back to the Listeners throughout the second half of the book. And learning the recent history of the Listeners before most of them died in WoR would have been more narratively fulfilling. It just felt like we were going back to review a plot that had already ended 2 books ago and had very little insight left to glean from it. The scene with Nale was the only interesting one, though I did like getting some closure on Eshonai's last moments.

I recommend reading the epigraphs in the copppermind. It's a lot easier to see what kind of Fused he is by reading them all sequentially instead of separated by entire chapters. Really, that's the case for the epigraphs in general, I'm always excited to read them in the coppermind after the book is over.

Not necessarily. That's assuming that the Ghostbloods and The Son's of Honor haven't had interactions in the past. Gavilar suspected them of being the people that sent Szeth to kill him before Szeth told him it was the Parshendi. Mraize didn't think he'd cooperate or very much wanted to be dealing from a position of strength in any discussions on it. Also, on Kelek's part, being able to get off Roshar becomes a lot less attractive if every other relevant party on Roshar is also able to get off world. Whoever cracks that problem is going to keep it as secret as they can because it becomes a lot less valuable when more people know how to do it. If the Fused/Odium were to get it, there's no where Kelek could hide from them in the Cosmere. Given that we don't know the entire nature of the relationship between the Ghostbloods and Kelek, we should not and can not rule out the course of action they took as reasonable given the circumstances. It is more than possible that they tried diplomacy sometime in the past and it didn't work. Once that was ruled out as a course of action, knives in the night became their best option.

They knew that Kelek had knowledge of what Gavilar was doing. They likely didn't want to experiment on him(or it wasn't their primary goal at least), they wanted his knowledge on Gavilar's experiments. It might have been why they were pursuing Amaram and the other Sons of Honor as well. Between them and Shallan they didn't find what they were looking for when hunting down the Sons of Honor in the Shattered Plains and Restares was the last remaining member who would have had the knowledge they seek. Well Nale also knew what was going on but he's significantly harder to apprehend given he has an entire order of Knights Radiant at his command.