Stark

Windrunners express offers same day delivery for deliveries in the west if you order around a Highstorm... Not as flexible as Amazon, but they are working on it. This is the kind of inanity I was hoping for!

I have to wonder, is Hoid the blind man. He said he would let Roshar burn if he needed to, with tears in his eyes. So is this prophecy about Hoid - The many rejoin and become one, Hoid lifts the scales from his eyes and sees what the cost of getting to this point was, and weeps?

Was just thinking about the different things Surgebinders could accomplish non-violently during peacetime. This stems a bit from Dalinar using his shards to dig a latrine in WoK. Obviously, Edgedancers and Truthwatchers could make spectacular farmers and healers with their access to Progression. Bondsmiths and Windrunners, with their access to Adhesion, and its implied uses with Connection could make very skilled therapists. But what really has my brain hamster spinning its little wheel is thinking of Stonewards and Bondsmiths, and how they have control over Tension. From the Coppermind, tension is described as: Taking the flexible and making it rigid. And, I assume, vice versa. If my assumption is correct, and they can take something rigid and make it pliable, Stonewards and Bondsmiths must make killer masseuses. Think of all that tension they could manipulate and relieve. If there is any accuracy to this line of thinking, then Dalinar must give world ending back rubs. Navani is a lucky woman. Any other fun uses of the surges you can think of - I know this sort of topic has been discussed before, but the mental image of Taln, or Dalinar, working as a masseuse after the series is too much fun to not share. Edit: Fixed the shared surge for Windrunners and Bondsmiths. Thanks for the catch Honorless!

I just got my Amazon ship notice for the physical copy. So I will have opinions starting some time next week, I think. I'm cautiously optimistic, based on what has been said about the art improvements.

Thanks! I figured I'd play with the name a bit - he has Radiant surge and on potentially Void surge, so I split Truthwatcher into its components, Truth and Watcher, and played with that to try to name him.

Slightly off the current topic branch, but still falling under the umbrella of 'Belonging to multiple orders': Let's say someone managed it, they were found by two spren of different orders who were willing to share a bond, and had Oaths that were not mutually exclusive. Let's say Windrunners and Edgedancer as an example. Would that Radiant then be enhanced by the resonance of both orders - extra squires and the Edgedancer resonance (I believe the suspect is a facility of communication)? Would they have a new resonance for the combination of four surges? Or would they be approaching Mistborn level where they have two many individual powers to develop a resonance? I don't think they would develop a resonance for each of the 11 possible power combination of Abrasion, Adhesion, Gravitation and Progression. And I don't think that four surges is enough to get into the Mistborn level of having too many powers for a resonance to develop. I feel the most likely case would be a new, previously unheard of resonance would develop for them. And on a similar vein, as Renarin is bonded to a corrupted Truthwatcher spren, I don't think he will have the normal Truthwatcher resonance. He will have a new resonance from the combination of Progression and inverted-Illumination, or void-Illumination (however we want to refer to the void-binding versions of the ten surges). Is it still accurate to call him a Truthwatcher? Or is he something new? A Voidwatcher? A Truthfinder?

Yeah, I'm going to have to start planning to go to some of these international events, I'd love to start seeing some of these signings live again. That, and I'd have a better position to convince my wife that our daughter should cosplay as Doomslug...

Scariest object? Nightblood. Scariest power? Hemalurgy. Thing I never want to accidentally run into at night in a dark Alley? Probably a Mistwraith. Harmless, but creepy. Scariest "natural" phenomena? The Shades in the Forest of Hell. Scariest non-shard individual? This is a toss up. There are a number of individuals of varying power levels who are pretty scary in their own right. Kelsier. Mraize. Marsh. The Blackthorn. TLR.

Potential for spoilers, obviously, for Stormlight four. But from what I saw, nothing we didn't already now from Stormlight 3. The Tor article I though it was neat. a four minute excerpt.

Some really goo ones in here it seems. Well done! I can't wait to see them all.

I think your best bet would be to carry the seeds of those Drop-dead trees from Edgedancer. Make them grow, then fall on your enemies. Or vines to entangle. Or something with thorns to pierce. But I do not see any possible efficient application of progression as an offensive ability. But this is not a typically offensive ability. The abrasion surge seems better used for offense abilities. Make everything frictionless, so they fall and cannot recover. Or increase the friction of everything, so everything scratches.

I'm heavily invested on figuring out where in this block of time the Shin Invasion happened. A major theory of mine hinges on it occurring after the Recreance.

Also given the ideological differences between spren types, it is unlikely that you will find two spren types that will have complimentary personality types. You most likely would hamper your progression through the oaths severely by bonding multiple spren. Sure, Honorspren and Cryptics do not have contradictory oaths, but they are opposed in mindset. The bond would not happen.

So the least alcoholic drink on Roshar?

*Emphasis mine* So, Bavadin prefers to let her Avatars do the direct work. Okay. Do all of Bavadin's Avatars appear as gods? Or does she create 'minor' Avatars that appear in Society to nudge it along as 'simple' humans? If yes, the kindly-ish Lady Judge Heelis, who sets the task to Kenton of securing a unanimous vote - which forces the Sand Masters to be more independent and to contribute more to society. And who maybe appears on the cover of white sand volume three? Is she a good candidate for being a minor avatar of Autonomy? If not her, are there any other named characters who influence Kenton's journey that you might consider to be a candidate for being a minor Avatar of Bavadin, presuming dhe can make minor Avatars. (If Honor can have Avatars/splinters as big as Stormfather and as small as Syl, It stands to reason that the shard who created Patji could create splinter/avatars of minor to no power)

My guess would be that Miles Resonance was his immunity to pain - he was healing so much, he did not really feel pain anymore, which also mixes with the self loathing from Gold use... Maybe Wayne has a faster processing speed, with healing and time dilation?

Wasn't there also an ardent talking about coins? In TWoK? Or was that Hoid being Hoid and I'm misremembering?

That is the implication I was hinting towards. I am in now way shape or form involved in anything from Dragonsteel Entertainment, just a fan from Montreal. That said, I cannot imagine another flower that would grace this book, so I think we are finally getting to see what the Tears look like. And for you number lovers out there, I don't think it is coincidental that the flowers drawn there have five petals...

This brings Tears to my eyes.

Kaladin broke his oath by refusing to protect. The gems in the tower indicate conflict in Windrunners about the fourth oath. It has to be something about accepting that he cannot protect everyone. Or that failure will happen. Or that he must allow others the chance to protect themselves.

Wouldn't a disk, like Xena's chakram be better suited as a thrown shard weapon, due to the larger hitbox? Or a boomerang? Syl-arang anyone?

I don't think so - Renarin could not use progression to heal Rysn's legs - she had been crippled long enough that her mental image of herself in this form had been solidified. Trying to use progression on someone beyond what their genetics would normally allow, or to an extent beyond their vision of their normal state? This just seems like an impossible feat, or one where the cost of Investiture is needlessly high. A better option would be to cause non-sentient life that has the capability to do so, to grow in ways lethal to your target. Like going full Poison Ivy and causing the plants to grow around your target and constrict/crush them. But causing giantism in a humanoid so that there heart fails as it can no longer support the body? Don't see that happening.

Hmmm. Sunraiser is the only blade we know of that has all ten glyphs. I would have been inclined to guess that it was a bondsmith blade, the sibling who is 'asleep' if not for the below WOB

How did any original members of any cult where you need mentorship from someone of 'X' status to progress make things work? They were the first and set the rules for those that come after. In this case, between Nale and the Highspren, there is no reason to doubt that they came up with a structure that the highspren approved of before more oaths were accepted. But the first ones were a surprise to everyone before Ishar forced the first proto-radiants to form orders and swear ideals. After that tradition. And in a cult of law, I am not surprised that the Skybreakers were able to maintain a strict adherence to the code of law.

As @Scion of the Mists says - purely unsubstantiated theory. What I do have is the below WOB stating that you can use a spike to take something from a spren. As spren are cognitive beings, and Kelsier is a cognitive shadow now, it is not a huge leap to think that someone in Shadesmar could spike Kelsier, or that he could do it himself. We also know that you can store memories, and use spikes to grant feruchemical abilities. You can also create the medallions to grant abilities. So it is not a huge stretch (in my mind)to see Kelsier, who has endless time, spending some of it doing research and coming up with the medallions. Then Physical realm people (We saw him communicate to spook across the realms) to get them to make what he needs. He downloads his memories into a a copper medallion, and then has his entire identity spiked out of his cognitive shadow. That Identity spike gets implanted into a mistrwraith and he essentially becomes a kandra. He gets his memory bank back, and reclaims them all. He gets his skeleton back, and reclaims his body. He continues to experiment with spikes and medallions, and gets his powers back. It is not a huge stretch (to me). He had 300 years to figure it out, and he is nothing if not driven. But I have no source, no proof, nothing other than the knowledge that invested metal can hit spren, and a bunch of thoughts that kinda make sense to me.