Stormlightning

I think that "Genius"/IQ wise, she's pretty much entirely ordinary. She's put in the academic work to have some significant clout, just the same as any researcher can do. She's also got some arrogance and aloofness going on that tend to make people assume she's smarter than she is, but I think she's got an entirely normal brain, intellect-wise. Which is something really rare in storytelling, so I love that she's this way. Genius in storytelling is an overused cop-out. This, instead, is very realistic to me.

I don't think she's lacking in emotions either, though. We see in her POV in OB that she feels, a lot, like @cometaryorbitsaid. She just hides it on purpose. She wants to be emotionless, and so she spends a lot of time squishing those things down, which would naturally create the underdeveloped sense of compassion/empathy we see in her. But I disagree with those who fall for her emotionless-robot facade--they're seeing exactly what she wants them to see, but not what she actually is. On the inside, she's a LOT more unsure of herself than she lets on, so even that arrogance is a mask over someone who knows she's not any smarter than anyone else. She just believes that presenting this way will get her the sway and control that she wants in her life/world, and she's certainly right about that.

And the emotional suppression stuff...there definitely seems to be a reason for it. I hope she comes to realize it's not the healthiest way to live and makes the effort to work through the trauma instead of doubling down on Machiavelli. For her, that's going to be waaayyyy harder than becoming a world-renowned academic was, though.

13 hours ago, AquaRegia said:

The plan is for the physical copies of the novels to be published in-house by Dragonsteel, which means they have just agreed to print, by my count, at least 173,000 premium hardcover novels.  Does anyone know if they have the capacity to accomplish this?

They don't print the books in-house, they have printers and binderies that do all that, so that's not an issue.

However, they do all the fulfillment themselves, and if they have the capacity for that is the real question. My guess is that, currently, no. They don't. But they have plenty of time to ramp up their operation before they have to start fulfillment, so I don't think you have anything to worry about.

I expect Moash will find his own humanity again at some point before he dies. And to many, that qualifies as "redemption arc" or at least an attempted one. So If you consider that a redemption arc, then yes, I expect one.

I expect him to realize how he's lied to himself and hurt people he loves, but I don't expect full-hero from him. Could it happen? Yeah, and that would probably make people who like to simplify things dislike it simply because it's a trope, but I care more that it's written well, and I'm confident Brandon would do it well if he chose that path. As much as I love to hate Moash and think he's a great bad guy and would cheer if he died ugly, I wouldn't mind a Sanderson-strength redemption arc at all. Like others have said, it's a big theme of the series that no one is beyond hope, and Moash would certainly strike something thought-provoking and probably deeply troubling to some people--but it's not good philosophy if it doesn't make some people uncomfortable!

But this is kinda like how in WoR/OB Shallan thought about some passing attraction to Kal and visa versa a bit, and people called it a love triangle. To me it was just normal, believable considering-your-options humanity, but since then I've noticed that people like to simplify stuff in order to bash on it, like tropes are inherently cheap, and I'd expect that same thing to happen for Moash if he did anything marginally good. But I think Brandon could make it so he earned it fairly and open-minded folks would be on board.

I thought it was a well-done video, for people who don't actually listen to Brandon talk at stuff I think it would be pretty new. And those were some impressively old photos!

Only thing I can think of is stuff about his company more generally. Do people know he has like 20 employees whose entire jobs consist of freeing him of other responsibilities so he can just write? Maybe talk about other authors like Dan Wells that he was friends with before they came into their own level of fame. People he's taught like Charlie Holmberg. He's building an underground lair. Big fan of ammonite. That's...all I got for now

There seems to be some indication that Leshwi might have had a proto-radiant bond with Riah which would also explain both why she's a shanay-im and why she's so fascinated by Windrunners. All of that considered...it seems strange she would fuse with a spren other than Riah. But she also seems to genuinely regret whatever rift happened between them, so maybe she did ditch Riah for a voidspren parallel. I'm *really* curious about what could have caused her to willingly walk away from that friendship.

With what we now know about the Recreance, I feel like the betrayal of the singers--aligning themselves with Odium--actually was worse than the Recreance, the spren just don't realize it because 1) they had no one to explain that the Recreance was agreed upon by both parties, and 2) the outcome of the Recreance had more immediately obvious and permanent repercussions than the singer betrayal. But the singer betrayal seems likely to have been more selfishly motivated than the human betrayal.

One reason I think this is unlikely (although definitely not impossible) is that the letters between Hoid and Harmony in RoW include Harmony becoming aware of how other Shards might invade or sneakily influence his system. Of course, they also discuss Odium at length. I feel like by the time Era 2 rolls around, Harmony has a good grasp on who Odium is and would be able to recognize that influence. But in BoM, he tells Wax that he doesn't know what the red haze pressing in on the system is.

We have no indication that he knows who Autonomy is, and considering that Hoid had to send a letter to First of the Sun to even think he had a chance of getting through to her, she's likely someone Harmony hasn't been able to get in contact with and who is actively cloaking her actions. So she still stands are the more likely culprit for "Trell" to me.

Like I said, none of this is by any means conclusive, and it's a tiny distinction, really. But I think that if Dalinar was responsible for Trell we'd have more recognizable indicators than we've got.

2 hours ago, Necessary Eagle said:

Was the cremling pen (penling?) specified as being from the Ghostbloods?

It seems the only explanation. Mraize was somehow overhearing Pattern's conversations with Wit, and that was the implied reason. The Sleepless was reporting to Mraize.

As for the WoB, I think that Thaidakar would still be very wary of the Sleepless, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't still take advantage of their...skills. Perhaps he knows that the Sleepless on Roshar pretty much stay on Roshar. It's hard to take over a cosmere-wide group when you don't have an interest in leaving your planet, so maybe he's more open to them than to Sleepless in other parts of the cosmere.

12 hours ago, Honorless said:

What about Mercy?

  Reveal hidden contents

Apparently she was present during the confrontation between Odium and Ambition. Seemed like Ambition fled to her after Odium ripped chunks of power off her, then they both faced Odium together.

Harmony said that they worried him, perhaps damaged by Odium? Or as worrisome a Vessel as Ambition?

I agree with Paleo & Pagerunner that the Wisdom/survival/hiding Shard is the same, possibly the same as the one not on a planet,

  Reveal hidden contents

as Harmony was not able to contact them again

 

So counting: Ambition, Devotion, Dominion, Honor, Cultivation, Odium, Endowment, Preservation, Ruin, Autonomy, Invention, Whimsy, Mercy, Valor, that leaves two Shards unknown to us.

I'm inclined to think that Mercy helped Odium. I'm getting serious "euthenasia superfan" vibes from her. It would be a perfect twist on what is normally a virtue.

The one that is hiding I feel like must be Invention, because Sazed said he hasn't been able to find him...seems like an intentional "he's hiding" thing.

In Elantris when Raoden falls into Devotion's Perpendicularity, he hears a voice. So I don't think this is a particularly unique situation. I'll grant that Odium's golden light is weirdly similar to a Dawnshard's light, though.

Check out Brandon's 2019 State of the Sanderson to find out more, but there is still an Aether of Night series planned.

Personally, I think Hoid dislikes both Rayse and his Shard's Intent enough that he has no interest in gaining power from them. Like, if there were some useful power he could access without risk I'm sure he'd go for it, but I don't see him engaging in a confrontation with Rayse to do so. While he may be gathering powers, I don't think his goal is to get a little bit of each one of them. It's bigger than that, and the powers are just tools in a toolbelt. Some powers, like lightweaving, he's particularly interested in, but others I think he's fine to let go of. Contrary to many popular theories, I don't think his ultimate goal requires him to get some sliver of power from each Shard.

And even if his goal is as you said, I don't think Rayse would give him a second to talk if stepped on Braize. He'd take Hoid out immediately.

Odium wins at the end of book 5 and most of the main cast for the back 5 are Cognitive Shadows.

Siah Aimians primarily live in the Reshi Sea and ocean of Roshar. They have epic Atlantis cities.

Hoid is not trying to become the next Adonalsium and never was.

Moash will be redeemed.

@aneonfoxtribute there will be a ticketing table at the high school starting at 5pm if you don't want to go to B&N. Waiting in line at B&N is mostly to get the low numbered books.

Sorry, I have no idea why my quotes look so ridiculous, and the site is being weird and won't let me edit the post. 

 

 

 

 

 

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On 10/13/2019 at 4:40 AM, Parallax said:

 1. Nobody needs teaching that murder is wrong, should we stop punishing murderers? At any rate you have a particular theory of punishment which many people don't share. In fact most people have a retributive theory of punishment which is backward looking. 

I just have to point out that this is total assumption on your part, and I think it's wrong. Maybe in terms of personal conflict lots of people think of punishment as just retributive, but almost ALL modern criminal justice systems are formed around rehabilitation and NOT retribution. We aren't the Romans (though perhaps their reasoning wasn't retribution either, but just deterrence).

What, exactly, do you find so important or meaningful about punishment anyway? It doesn't fix mistakes, on any scale. The "an eye for an eye" paradigm only works when it's actually possible to exact an equal punishment, but obviously Dalinar can't atone for millions of deaths.
He can trade his own life for exactly one, so is anything more irredeemable to you? And how does that work for minor sins that can't be undone? I can't just replace my spouse's favorite mug they made in 7th grade pottery class that got them through dad's cancer diagnosis that I shattered one day in a rage, so what's my redeemability? If being sorry, and regretting past choices, and wanting to move forward differently isn't enough, then what is?
This is a childish example, but what I'm getting at is that your "he's irredeemable" mentality isn't meaningful if it only extends to "he can't/hasn't paid for what he's done". Unless you can draw a specific line regarding what makes someone irredeemable and why one side of that line is definitively different than the other, I don't see the argument holding water. Without that, I don't think a point of no return exists, ergo, Dalinar is still redeemable. My own definition of a point of no return lies in their decision to not be sorry, regret it, or want to change, and obviously that doesn't apply to Dalinar. He changed.

Lastly, maybe I'm misunderstanding, but you seem to be blaming Brandon for creating a character who did horrible things and got off scot-free (although I would argue that he didn't) and then making us as readers sympathize for him. I don't understand this frustration. Other than it being a work of fiction that Brandon is entitled to design however he likes, people get out paying for their crimes all the time. It's just a reality that life isn't fair, bad people get away with stuff, etc, etc. Lots of stories have a terrible person as the protagonist (plus, they stay terrible, but we love and justify them anyway). Can you explain why this bothers you so much?

Journey before Destination.

If you choose to say people can become irredeemable prior to their death, that's your choice, but I will never agree with it. In my mind, the concept of a "point of no return" is so subjective and psychological that the only sensible conclusion is that it doesn't exist at all. As Brandon nails in the book, "If we accept the person we are when we fall, the journey ends." I'm sorry for anyone who believes that others are eternally stuck where they fall. Not because it limits other people (although it certainly can, and that's a terrible crime), but because it will undoubtedly limit their ability to forgive themselves someday.

Despite his crimes, Dalinar chose to become a better person, and I don't think that is impossible or unrealistic at all. But it requires he not define himself by his past, which is something that takes a LOT of courage to accept. Tbh...most of us don't have that kind of courage. Unfortunately, many people don't even believe it IS courage.

And to be clear, I don't think it's an easy, one-time choice. I'm sure Dalinar will continue to struggle with bouts of guilt, inability to forgive himself, and his inability to undo his past. But he's on the right track to get to a place of lasting peace, that'll just take time. I wouldn't hold it against him if he was able to find peace and happiness. He's responsible for horrible crimes against humanity and destroying so many other people's peace, so it might seem unfair that he should get it.

But I just don't think people's pasts should be held over their head when they aren't that person anymore.

Quote

"It was impossible just a few short years ago", said a deep, powerful voice, his. "This is proof. The connection is not severed but can be warped to allow for travel. Not yet, as far as you like, but we must start the journey somewhere". 

I feel the need to talk about this line. 
I get the impression from Gavilar's phrasing that he had the KNOWLEDGE to do [insert whatever they did] years ago but just didn't have the means. As in, he seems to be saying that something in the nature of the portal they are using has changed. It used to be impossible...now it's letting us get to Braize. In the future, it'll let us get even farther.

Well, the only thing significant thing I can think of that changed around this time is that Gavilar started bonding the Stormfather, plus other spren forming bonds. Honor's been dead for a long time, Taln hasn't yet given in to torture...so that's all I've got. 

What do we have as options for portals? The one portal nearby we know of is the oathgate in Kholinar, but Shallan's interactions with the spren in Thaylen City indicate that they would not be the ones allowing travel, unless even at this time Sja-Anat were around to corrupt them. Which opens all its own box of worms, but is totally possible. 

However, we also know of another portal. Whatever agreement Honor made with the Heralds, it gave them some sort of ability to transfer between worlds, and trap Odium's cognitive shadow friends there, and who knows what else. Since we know that the oathpact isn't entirely shattered, it may be that something about how it works can be manipulated. And hey, we suddenly have Tanavast's sorta-cognitive-shadow around to do just that!

So, here's a fun theory: The two in this scene are Nale and Kalak, on errand from Ishar. Whether it's actually possible or not, Ishar believes that they can alter the oathpact by negotiating with Gavilar, the one who now speaks for Honor. He knows that the desolation is getting closer, and believes that when Taln breaks, the oathpact will be done with. In which case, everyone dies, so their only option is to get outside Odium's influence--leave the Rosharan system.

So there's a highly questionable tinfoil theory explaining why Nale would be okay with any of this, what method is being warped for travel, and why they even want to go beyond Braize. Ta-da!

14 hours ago, dvoraen said:

One thing I really want to comment that I'm seeing in this thread is that there's a very big assumption being made that the two to whom Gavilar is speaking are Nale and Kalak.  Sure, they were given as "Ambassadors from the West" per Jasnah's prologue, but was it ever explicitly said that they were the only people described as "Ambassadors from the West"?  To my recollection, that's not the case, and there were multiple foreign dignitaries in Kholinar that day, including Taravangian.

I'm actually really tempted to agree with you to some extent; the more I try to fathom how Nale is involved in Gavilar's plans the more it just doesn't make sense. Although, this same night is when Gavilar tells Taravangian about his visions. Maybe he decided to tell Nale about them, too. True to his MO, Nale goes for the nuke.

But anyway, if it's not Nale and Kalak, my first assumption is that Brandon doesn't remember how direct his use of "ambassadors from the West" was and Peter/Karen will likely point this out so he changes it to something that doesn't scream "those two guys from every other prologue" at us. Or he is intentionally going for the red herring.

Throughout the rest of this reading, Navani thought quite a bit about Gavilar's new shady friends, and all the other references seemed like it was talking pretty concretely about the Sons of Honor. I've done some digging, and it seems like Gavilar's change in personality was really recent. Like, no more than a year prior to his death, but probably even less. I can't believe he could have this much information from a year of research(especially considering how long Jasnah's been researching to have so little comparatively), so I'm really starting to wonder about Restares and the Sons of Honor. Even though the book says that Gavilar isn't their founder/leader, I've always kinda thought of him that way, and therefore thought of the Sons of Honor as a fairly young organization. But now I'm thinking they might be really really old, perhaps old enough that their name came from out of the shift humans made from Odium to Honor.

I have more to say on this topic but I gotta run, and also, I need to do a bit more research. More thoughts to come.

3 hours ago, Pagerunner said:

Again, could be a meaningless detail to give specificity to Navani's PoV. Or, is someone actively screwing with maps? I'm reminded of how Lin Davar and Amaram had extensive personal map collections. Could be a whiff of a conspiracy here, something big being hidden in plain sight by Stalin-ing it out of all the maps.

I really like this idea. It does seem that there's been an undue amount of attention on maps among suspicious types. 

Yeah,  something here is really throwing off what I thought I knew about Gavilar. I really wish Brandon had read just slightly farther-- if it WAS the Heralds, I'm sure he's going to mention Nale's birthmark/scar to lock it in. And if it's not,  the Sons of Honor are really starting to alarm me (not that they weren't already...). If Braize is "too close", what in the world are they shooting for? Ashyn isn't that much farther away...perhaps this where Vasher becomes important?

There's art in WoK of Nale holding aloft the Sword of Retribution, which I've always wondered about. If that's somehow Nightblood... Nale could be switcharooing the Five Scholars, trying to get access to Awakening for some reason. He's crazy, so who knows what he thinks it'll accomplish. /tinfoil

20 minutes ago, Karger said:

What?

This sounds to me like he went, got something, and brought it back:

Quote

"Being able to bring them back and forth from Braize doesn't mean anything, Gavilar", one of them said. "It's too close to be a relevant distance".

Although it could be something like"bring" as in "summon".

Gavilar seems to know so much - I mean he literally went to Braize - so I have a hard time believing that he doesn't know who he's talking to (assuming it really is the Heralds). Not that it's impossible,  though. I'm more inclined to think he knows who they are, but is still being played.  Man,  I wish we'd gotten a little more! I'm stumped as to what this could mean

Am I the only one that had a slight meltdown when Navani described Gavilar's two uncommon visitors as "ambassadors from the West"? That's exactly the same phrase that Jasnah used to describe Nale and Kalak in her prologue chapter. I assumed the two men to be from the Sons of Honor, but whether the Heralds would be members of that group or not, the fact that they were talking about trying to travel beyond Braize has got my brain exploding with implications...

Your theory wasn't debunked until recently, so you should congratulate yourself. Brandon once confirmed that it is technically possible to alloy lerasium to change your spiritweb in the way you imply,  and it was a theory that Hoid had done this. It had picked up several followers until it was debunked last year with this wob:

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PallonianFire

You said that it's theoretically possible that Hoid could have alloyed the lerasium bead with another god metal to acquire another magic. Has he done so?

Brandon Sanderson

He has not. Because there are certain things that were preventing that from working.

Skyward Denver signing (Nov. 15, 2018)

Very interesting theory, I admit that from a storytellers perspective, there's a lot of appeal in doing Dalinar's arc that way. But I'm not convinced that the Odium shard dropping would have the kind of terrible affect you are suggesting. If it drops whole, then there's always the concern that any dandy on the street with a little Connection could pick it up, and in that case one of our heroes better take it first. But if it were to splinter into just a whole bunch of investiturestuffs, whether as an immediate consequence or shortly afterward by the heroes, I'm really not sure what that would do to Roshar. After all, not all spren that are of Honor or Cultivation are obviously so. A lot of minor spren seem to be a mix that are mostly the result of human perception, and Odium-investiture might fit in nicely with some of them without rocking the boat.

The investitures/magics/whatever that sprout from splintering are very loosely tied to the Shard's Intent in my mind. There's no obvious tie between Devotion/Dominion and how their power functions on Sel (granted, we don't know much). So I see a bunch of Odium investiture possibly leading to some extra unpleasant spren or something, but overall I imagine it to be a relatively passive effect. Not honed by Rayse's own goals, I imagine it is much less volatile--dare I say that if a more wholesome person had picked up the Shard in the first place, maybe Passion would have been the appropriate name (like the whole Harmony/Discord thing).

Plus if Rayse dies, your post seems to suggest you think the Shard will be freed from it's restrictions, in which case successfully splintering the Shard would probably just lead to it spreading across the whole Cosmere, since IIRC Odium hasn't really invested himself in the Rosharan system. And that kind of thinning seems like it would erase the heavy-handed effects you surmise.

Anyway, I'm probably forgetting something dumb and obvious about how that works. Cool theory. I'm in this isolated camp that actually thinks Rayse might win at the end of book 5, leaving books 6-10 to happen mostly to cognitive shadow characters or something, just because I wouldn't put anything past Brandon. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯