Shlee

Why is that? If Ym's spren was a Cultivation spren (which I'm not 100% convinced because Wyndle says "Did you know we were considering bonding this nice cobbler man instead of you?" but that aside...) it was described as: and Stump's spren is described as: which sound exactly the same to me. So I'd say it's safe to say that Ym and Stump have the same type of spren. IF that is the Edgedancer spren, Wyndle's appearance can easily be explained by the fact that he and Lift obviously have a different relationship, since she can touch him, so it's possible she sees him more as he appears in the cognitive, as has been postulated several other places here on the forums. I'd say that's most likely, but I'm not willing to rule out Truthwatcher spren either, since we haven't actually seen Glys yet and I think there's something weird going on there. Speaking of, that was the one thing that jumped out at me. (probably silly-ly and me way overthinking, but still....) "We watch the others. The assasin. The surgeon. The liar. The highprince." No mention of Renarin?? Even though he's supposed to have had Glys for a lot longer than was immediately apparent. Whyyyyyy? I now have to do an entire re-read with special attention to every cremling ever mentioned! Edit: Also, how the heck does something composed entirely of cremlings talk in any kind of normal voice? Also I'm going to jump on the Tashi = Ishar train because of the swearing. I dunno about god of gods, but Binder of the World certainly makes me think Bondsmith.

Why do you think that says that Adolin doesn't have a strong viewpoint? Consider that in TWoK, he's only a "viewpoint" character in 3 of the 5 books, and actually only a "viewpoint" character in 2 of the 5 books in WoR, despite us actually having more page time with him in the second book than the first. Not trying to invalidate your reaction, just curious if you're seeing something I'm not that's going to automatically mean way less Adolin time.

There are passion spren: Not quite the same thing, but still potentially embarassing lol

Or to totally derail in another direction - screams are a sign of Odium's influence? The only other screaming I recall hearing is Eshonai's peace voice - exacerbated when she's holding her "comet-like spren" that we still don't know if is the stormspren (not exactly the same description) or some other kind of spren (Willshaper?!). I think it's an interesting idea that honorblades fill the "cracks" in people - maybe that's why it wasn't a big deal at first, but then as he kept killing the crack kept getting bigger and then the honorblade wasn't enough? I don't think I see any connection between honorblades absorbing souls though. They'd have racked up a heck of a lot of them during desolations, unless we're assuming everything killed by a herald in a desolation is soul-less and that seems a bit of a stretch to me personally, although I suppose you could make arguments either way. Yay speculation!

Jeez, I miss a week or so travelling and the world explodes. Something I haven't seen yet that I think is interesting......Szeth, in the original scene, obviously WANTS to die. I think it's a very good change that Kaladin doesn't grant that to him himself - it would contradict the first oath of the Knight's Radiant as well. Szeth then (in my opinion from reading the tweaks) "chooses" to die by releasing the bond to his honorblade. At that point, it's his choice, out of Kaladin's hands. You can't save someone from themselves. As for some of the comments on Syl and giving orders/knowing things, don't forget that her actions/personality have shown changes (advancements?) as Kaladin has sworn oaths - and we've hardly seen any interaction with her at all since Elhokar, so it's entirely possible that she knows more (and is possibly more commanding?) than she did before.

There we go Good job!

Getting close, but not quite, and yes, referring to Szeth.

I'm not sure how specific these are supposed to be. Let's see....this person is the first person we're aware of to have control of the most infamous person in Roshar.

Haha, but you are always handing them out to new people, actions for which I simply cannot give my approval!! Nothing personal m'dear, I like you, I just don't approve of your methods! That being said, majority usually rules and I won't mind being outvoted.

Rushu, the ardent that's always got her head in the clouds

For starters, I just stumbled across this thread, and oh my gosh, so much awesomeness! I love character talk and this is awesome. I'm also a bit amused by how much it's gotten derailed into character predictions, but that's even more fun I can't help thinking that after that deep chasm scene between Shallan and Kaladin that Shallan and Adolin's relationship needs some depth, and I am hoping that that is where Adolin's story arc is going. I can easily see him killing Sadeas and the subsequent fallout we're all expecting him to have with his family to push him and Shallan closer as well. I also wouldn't be surprised if we don't have some issues with Shallan's own family, once her brothers find out who really killed both their parents..... I know it's a bit of a trope, but a Shallan/Adolin vs the world sort of arc would be awesome. Especially because I think both can make the argument that what they did isn't necessarily morally wrong. I also think that Kaladin would be supporting (he's said on multiple occasions that Sadeas needs to go). Even though we're pretty sure he's not going to be in the same place (at least at the beginning of book 3), I can easily see the three of them forming a sort of mutual support group. What I'm curious about is how that reflects on the public perception of all these new Radiants if news gets out. Shallan's killed her parents, Adolin's just murdered Sadeas, if Kaladin supports them, not even taking into account that shash brand of his....well I think they'll have some major PR work to do. I think Dalinar's going to have to make some tough choices about how to unite things. I don't see him totally turning his back on Adolin - there's nothing in the actual codes or in Way of Kings that we've been shown so far that says you can't off a totally evil person. Obviously, a skybreaker wouldn't agree, but Dalinar's a bondsmith and we still know so little about them. And to put in the obligatory something related to the topic, it also amused me that everyone agrees that Jasnah's a strong INTJ, and unsurprisingly so am I. I knew there was a reason I liked her (you know, other than the fact that she thinks exactly like me and every person who's read WoK that knows me makes the comparison!)

Lots of competing views on this one. My personal opinion: The stormfather was a very strong spren before the Recreance, like the Nightwatcher is currently. She is sentient in the physical realm without the bond, and I think he was also. How that relates to power and/or Investiture, or whatever, is beyond me, but to me, that puts those particular spren a step above the "regular" sentient spren, such as honorspren and cryptics, that lose their sentience in the physical realm without the bond (and which are themselves a step above "nonsentient" spren, such as flamespren, that are just bits of ideas pulled briefly into the physical). I don't think its out of the realm of possibility for those more sentient/powerful spren to not "break" in the exact same way. Since these particular spren are sentient without the bond, I don't necessarily think that losing the bond means losing their sentience, like it does for the others. So instead of losing his form and becoming trapped in the physical realm "dead" like the shardblade spren, I think he just broke his mind some, and now is kind of mentally unstable. Perhaps before the Recreance he had more powers than just being part of the highstorm and now he's "trapped" as the highstorm spren. Who knows. But, like I said, this is purely my personal speculation

"But as for Ishi’Elin, his was the part most important at their inception; he readily understood the implications of Surges being granted to men, and caused organization to be thrust upon them; as having too great power, he let it be known that he would destroy each and every one, unless they agreed to be bound by precepts and laws. —From Words of Radiance, chapter 2, page 4" - Epigraph This implies that Ishar had a pretty strong hand in deciding how the bonds between spren and humans were going to work, although how is pretty unclear. Taln also refers to Shallan as one of "Ishar's knights." But the visions with Nohadon also seem to imply surgebinders existing before the Knights Radiant, so I'm not sure how that makes sense unless Ishar set up how the bonds and surges worked (once again, how?) and Nohadon set up the social construct that was outlined in Way of Kings which became sort of the guidebook of the Knights Radiant. The oaths could have existed before then and just been more individually interpreted, perhaps. So many questions.

Ah, I see what you're saying, we are coming at it from two totally different angles, but I don't think a Herald has died a "true" death to break the bond with their blade, so I'm still of the opinion that they are all bonded to their original blades with the "true" bond or whatever they originally had. And Szeth's dying doesn't really prove anything one way or another - shardblades that aren't Nahel bonded still break their bonds with the owner's death, so Honorblades that aren't "truly" bonded could easily do the same thing. I guess basically my theory is that there is something equivalent to the Nahel bond that bonds the Heralds to their individual blades and the bond between Szeth and the honor blade is analogous to the bond between regular shardbearers and dead shardblades. I think that's also why the blades look different - Szeth's is described as plain, when it should have had glyphs and such, the dead shardblades don't glow properly or have glyphs, but the "live" ones do. I think it points to a parallel situation where both blades have two "types" of bond.

When the best part of Valentine's day was getting a new laptop charger from the US so you could get back on the forums

I got it now! I totally misunderstood you the first time. I thought you were saying that Nightblood + Vasher was the same as just Vasher, so I was really confused. My bad.

I'd disagree with this, because I think you can compare what happens with Shardblades - a true "shardblade bond" is the Nahel bond and a fake shardbond is the gemstone bonding ritual that Renarin does. People with the first type have considerably more power/ability than people using the second. I think this can be paralleled with Honorblades - each is bonded to a Herald and disappears when they die. Szeth's blade does not disappear when he dies, so I do not believe he can be bonded to it in the same way the Heralds are. So once again, I think two separate types of bonds exist - one that is "fully functional" (herald to his blade) and one that is not (like the dead-spren to shardbearer bonds). Granted, there's no proof this is the case, but I think it the more likely scenario, especially given that Szeth's bond is showing differences than what we are told by Kalak.

I'm pretty sure these are gravity-related spren. Shallan also says this in WoR: “Those spren,” Shallan whispered, so soft he could barely hear. “I’ve seen those . . .” They danced around the chasmfiend, and were the source of the light. They looked like small glowing arrows, and they surrounded the beast in schools, though occasionally one would drift away from the others and then vanish like a small plume of smoke rising into the air. “Skyeels,” Shallan whispered. “They follow skyeels too." Dalinar also mentions during the chasmfiend hunt that you see them around "the bodies of freshly killed greatshells" Oh, and after writing this I just remembered this: More good thoughts with the update. I agree that something is fishy about that convenient rockfall of Taravangian's. The origin being Honor's shardpool is an interesting thought. I don't know that the mists came from the shardpool though.... Lots of interesting thoughts in here. I am curious about links to our current Radiants and past radiants. (there's a recent WoB about Kaladin's mother giving up a lot in her life... so she may have lighteyed connections) and Davars and the Kholins seem to have lengthy histories.....it's interesting, at any rate. I also wonder what the original Heralds' family names were (we know Jezrien was a king before he was a herald....)

Welcome and enjoy! All that depth is what makes me love these books SO much. I've re-read them more times than I can count and we still seem to be running across things I never noticed!

Welcome! Ah Sixth of the Dusk! My favorite world, if not my favorite story

I don't pretend to understand why the dead shardblades affect eye color, but I think it has to do with the bonding process, and even then it's slow, if we look at Moash's example. Just having the blade isn't enough. You have to bond it. In regards to Kaladin - I think eye color change is directly related to surgebinding, not the bond itself. He's only surgebinding very small amounts in the early days, and I think his eyes are probably lightening whenever he does so, but it's not enough to be noticeable. However, after he says the second Oath - and draws in what is obviously more Investiture than we've ever seen him draw before, his eyes change. I think this has less to do with the Oath per se, and more to do with the amount of surgebinding he does while rescuing Dalinar. This is from Chapter 2 of WoR when they are walking around the barracks, the day after saving Dalinar's army. Well before Kaladin speaks the third oath. And when the comment is made by Teft about Kaladin's eyes being "lighter than any king" he's just floated down from the clouds after the battle with Szeth. I do think that the effects take longer to fade the lighter his eyes get, but I still haven't seen any textual proof that it's a permanent condition (further supported by the SA3 Kaladin chapter excerpt we have, if it remains canon). I think this is the reason we haven't seen a noticeable change in Shallan yet - she's still doing relatively minor surgebinding in just about every scene we've seen her in, and her eyes are already "light" so I think it's going to take a higher level of investiture on her part before someone in-world notices a change enough to remark on it.

Not to mention there's an entire country/culture of "lighteyes" and an entire country without them: "There weren’t people with light eyes in the Makabaki region, though they had kings, and practically everyone in Iri had light yellow eyes." - WoR My personal theory: Surgebinding gives you supernaturally light eyes "lighter than any king" due to investiture. We haven't yet seen any confirmation that I'm aware of that this is a permanent condition. "Regular" light eyes will also change to the proper surgebinding color when holding stormlight. Both light and dark eyes are genetic (although in a different way than ours, since you can wind up with one light and one dark eye). Bonding a "dead" shardblade can give you "regular" light eyes, but not the true supernatural ones. I think this is a side-effect of the bonding process (pure speculation). Alethi social constructs are a leftover from a time when "lighteyes" actually meant someone with supernaturally light eyes, aka surgebinders, but in the however-many-hundreds-of-years they've been gone, has been replaced by "regular" light eyes, descendants of people who naturally genetically had light eyes and of those people who picked up shardblades post-Recreance.