galendo

Uh, and now to respond to the two people who responded between me starting and finishing my previous response. @Lilaer: I'm curious to know whether you think if following the rules of a game or telling the truth are honorable things in their own right, or if there has to be some element of cost to the participant for them to be considered honorable. For instance, while I find cheating dishonorable, I would find playing by the rules to be more the expected thing to do than the honorable thing to do. Maybe a little bit of honor there, but not a whole lot. Similarly, if someone asks me what the weather's like outside and I tell them the truth, I wouldn't consider that to be honorable unless I had some motivation to lie. It's telling the truth, but it's not honorable, at least in my book. Not dishonorable, either. Just sort of the normal thing to do. I'm not sure whether I think Dalinar is more honorable than Kaladin or not (I think they're both trying pretty hard, if not always flawlessly), but I'd agree that both are more honorable than Adolin. He was never as honorable as Dalinar in any event, and his murder of Sadeas was a sort of moral event horizon. He certainly did a few honorable things before that, though, like having himself imprisoned along with Kaladin. One of the few instances where I think Adolin behaved more honorably than Dalinar. @Moogle: I'm somewhat surprised you don't find Lift honorable, though I agree with you about Shallan, Jasnah, and Renarin. Lift seems to behave quite honorably, I think. She needs to eat, so who does she steal from? The rich people who can easily afford it. It's not quite as good as getting an honest job and not stealing, but I get the impression that that really isn't much of an option for her, if for no other reason than that Darkness will track her down if she stays in one spot for too long. Given that she can't find honest work, she's basically behaving as honorably as she possibly can: stealing the minimum amount (enough food to eat) from the people who can most afford it (the rich), even though it would be much safer and easier to steal from the poor. Also, don't forget that Lift basically sacrificed her life and/or freedom for a chance at saving a boy she just met like half an hour ago. It doesn't get much more honorable than that. I'd say that Lift racked up more "honor points" in the single chapter we saw her than almost every other character has in two entire books.

I'll respond with my thoughts to the two people who've already responded. @king of nowhere: It sounds like we've pretty similar definitions of honor. I think sacrifice is necessary, so I'd find keeping your word honorable, for instance, only if it's something that you wouldn't have done anyway. For instance, if I say I'm going to spend my Saturday relaxing and playing video games, I wouldn't call that honorable, because I'd be doing it anyway. But if I say I'm going to help my friend move on Saturday, and I do that instead of playing games, that could be considered honorable. At least, provided I didn't get enough back to compensate me for my time. If he paid me 100 bucks to help him, or if it was understood that he'd be helping me move next time, it would be more of a job or an exchange. No honor there. Maybe a better example would be volunteering at a homeless shelter or donating to a cause -- something where I have no reason to expect any tit-for-tat. As far as games go, I think we're actually in agreement there. Like, when someone conceeds a lost chess game, they're sacrificing the small chance of victory they have for a higher cause (not making their opponent slog through a dull game). So there's a little bit of honor there. Not a lot in the big picture -- it's a small sacrifice, and not that much of a higher cause -- but it's still something. @maxal: You've given a dictionary definition, which is fine if that's how you happen to define honor, but it's certainly not the only way to do so. My dictionary, for instance, gives no fewer than six definitions for 'honorable' and somewhere between six and eight for 'honor', after neglecting alternate usages of the words not relevant to the topic at hand. I guess I'm more interested in what you think than I am in what whichever dictionary you happen to have on hand thinks. Though it might be worth contrasting the definitions of honor and selflessness, because I see a lot of overlap there. Can anyone think of an honorable action that is not in some way selfless? They probably aren't perfect synonyms, but I can't think of an example offhand.

Okay, in the intent of not hijacking this topic away from its intended point of discussing what we'd change about SA if we had the ability, I've created a new thread for people to discuss their interpretations of what's honorable or dishonorable, or which characters are honorable or dishonorable (as well as outlining my own thoughts on the matter). The topic can be found here http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/41552-how-do-you-define-honorable/ and we can discuss the matter to our hearts' content there. So I guess I'd say that if I were changing SA, I'd make it so that the Radiants had to follow my own personal belief of what it means to be honorable, and there would be sharper penalties for those who failed to follow the code. It just seems to me that some characters in SA get off a lot easier than others, and I don't really like that. I'd rather that the conflicts between the Orders came about more from deciding which of two goods was the greater good than to have them be so disparate that I can't even see the logic by which some of the Orders appear to be operating.

Honor plays a big role in the Stormlight Archives, but it means something different to most of the characters involved. How do you define honor? What sorts of actions can be honorable or dishonorable? Bonus topic: which characters from SA meet or fail to meet your definition of honor? I'll go first. Due to the nature of the subject, all simplifications will likely be over-simplifications, but I would probably define an honorable action to be an action taken (primarily) at the actor's expense, because the actor believes it to be right. So for me, honor focuses on both sacrifice and on intent. To illustrate with a few examples from SA: Jasnah refusing to claim a devotion that she doesn't believe is honorable, because she believes it wrong to lie about her faith (intent) and because being truthful has costs, namely a loss of reputation and acceptance (sacrifice). On the other hand, Jasnah murdering a bunch of random thugs isn't honorable; she has good intent, as she presumably thinks she's doing the right thing, and arguably she is...but there's no real sacrifice on her part. It's the thugs that are paying the price for her belief, not Jasnah herself. For another example, take Shallan. Her decision to go find the Oathgates is an honorable one. She believes she's doing the right thing, helping to prevent the end of the world, and she's doing it at some cost to herself by exchanging her cushy position at the camp for the toils and dangers of an army at war. On the other hand, her decision to ransom her brother for two knives and a necklace was not honorable (nor was it dishonorable). She may have had the intent to do good, and I think most of us can agree that saving family members from death is generally the right thing to do, but there wasn't any sacrifice on her part -- what she got (the life of her brother) was worth far more to her than what she gave up (a few baubles). What do you think? How do you define honor?

No offence, but I think we have a difference of opinions here. Or something. To answer your objections in roughly the order they appeared: Under no moral code that I can think of could Adolin's killing of Sadeas be considered an honorable action. Expedient, sure. Good even. But never honorable. As far as Renarin goes, I don't think we've seen enough of him to make any decisions either way. I don't recall seeing him do either an honorable or a dishonorable action. He's an unknown at this point, as far as I can recall. Can a profession itself be honorable? I don't think so. One might go into, say, a poorly paid profession for honorable reasons, but I don't know that the profession itself could be considered honorable. Nor do I think that a person is automatically honorable just because they're a member of said profession. I get that, according to the way the story's been set up, the Radiants don't actually have to be honorable. But the point of this thread is to talk about what things we'd change if we could, and this has always kind of bugged me. I originally thought, when I was reading about the ten orders and all that stuff, that the different orders would be for different types of honor. Like one would be for keeping your word, another for following the law, another for always fighting a fair fight, another for never going behind someone's back, etc. And that seemed kind of cool, because honor is a tricky thing to pin down and open to at least some interpretation. But all of the orders were supposed to follow the first Ideal, and I'm just not seeing it from Jasnah or Shallan (or Adolin or Szeth, though they're not Radiants and so are somewhat outside the scope of this discussion). If I were writing the story, I'd have made the Radiants need to be more honorable to keep their powers. It seems like most of them get off lightly. Finally, Shallan's intent to save the world was basically what I was referring to when I mentioned her going to find the Oathgates -- that's exactly why she went to find them, because she thought they were important in stopping a catastrophe. Like I said, that's one of the two honorable things she's done.

I could nitpick a bunch of things that I'd have done differently, but if I were to pick a few big ones: 1) Ditch the regular flashback sequences -- I find that the flashbacks are rather boring when compared to the main story, and they often don't even answer the questions I want answered. Like, the one question I really wanted answered from Shallan's sequence was what she did to become a Radiant, and after reading her entire sequence, I still don't have any idea. The fact that only one character gets sequences each book means there's no hope for getting that scene in the future, either. The idea of each character getting a book of flashbacks seems flawed. 2) Don't force certain character interactions -- Other people have mentioned Kaladin/Moash interactions already on this thread, but I find the Shallan/Kaladin interactions to be the worst offenders, entirely forced and unbelievable. Almost every scene where they're together seems to me forced and unnatural, with characters holding the idiot ball left and right. It's really annoying. 3) Make more Radiants behave honorably -- This kind of bugs me; by my count there are exactly two honorable characters in Stormlight Archives that we know about, Kaladin and Dalinar. Three if you count Szeth and, I guess, four if you count Lift. I don't expect a lot of characters to be honorable -- part of the setting is that most people aren't, largely due to Odium's influence -- but it seems that the Radiants at least should be. While Kaladin and Dalinar walk the walk, Shallan has done a total of two honorable things by my count (go find the Oathgates and obtain pardon for the deserters) and Jasnah one (refuse to claim a devotion that she didn't believe in). When weighted against all the dishonorable things they seem to get away with without losing their spren, it seems pretty unfair. I could gripe about more things that I'd change, most of which involve changing Shallan's character drastically (it's not a coincidence that she features prominantly in all three of my complaints above). In fact, just because I can: 4) Make Shallan a better character -- I won't go into too much detail, other than what I've mentioned above, but I consider her easily the least compelling main character in SA so far. I won't go so far as to say that the story would be better without her, but the way the plot twists and twists just to give Shallan a prominant role is incredibly annoying. Jasnah "dies" so that Shallan can be alone to do her stuff. Kaladin earns his place in a Highprince's household, while Shallan is just given hers for no good reason. It's pretty darn frustrating.

I'm not sure that will work, at least if you want to keep the possibility of releasing the Shardbearer later. First, I'm not sure how long one could keep someone's hands chained above his head before lack of blood flow became a serious issue (I just held one of my hands above my head for about a minute and it started to fall asleep. I imagine permanent damage would be swift and severe). Binding the hands closed would likely have similar issues with fungus, rot, and, if bound tightly, necrosis. Also bear in mind that, if they're a Shardbearer, you can't ever let them free - not for more than ten heartbeats, anyway, which in practice means never. That means you'd need someone on standby to feed them at meal times, give them water to drink, and, uh, help them with the chamberpot. The issues are complex enough that "kill them or let them go" seems like a reasonable simplification.

You know, this sums it up really well. The awesome scenes were much more awesome in WoR, but everything else was better in WoK. So I guess which one you prefer depends on whether you prefer the quality rollercoaster of WoR or the consistent quality of WoK.

From a meta-perspective, it's probably mostly convevience. Sanderson needs a lot of characters around for his main characters (Kaladin, Shallan, Dalinar, and arguably Adolin) to interact with. He also needs a number of Knights Radiant. He's obviously chosen to make the setting Dalinar/Adolin-centric, which is a natural choice since more world-shaking stuff tends to happen around nobility than around commoners (yes, Shallan's technically petty nobility, but the point still holds). So if you need a bunch of characters around your Radients, and you need a bunch of Radiants, and you probably want most of your Radiants to congregate and cooporate with each other against the baddies, then what better way to kill all the birds with a single stone? Radiants related to each other provide a lot of characters with immediate reasons to cooperate. Jasnah, for instance, gives Shallan a character to interact with throughout WoK, but it's her relationship to Dalinar that draws Shallan into the Kaladin-Dalinar-Adolin circle in WoR. And Jasnah herself won't need a reason to join the circle whenever she gets around to it. Her relationship to Dalinar is enough to draw her in. From an in-world perspective, I'd say that you could justify the Kholin's Radiant tendencies by the children being influenced by the father, who's a pretty darn honorable guy himself. (Even if that doesn't really explain Jasnah, who became Radiant before Dalinar shaped up.) But if you want the true reason, I'd say it's plot convenience. Neither the author nor the readers want hundreds of characters and plot threads to keep track of in order to accomodate a dozen disjoint Knights Radiant.

I don't mind a relationship starting off on a bad note -- it's practically a guarantee in the romance genre -- I just don't like the number of hoops WoR jumps through to get there. For instance, if they'd got off on the wrong foot because Kaladin killed her brother, that'd be one thing; but the number of coincidences that have to happen for them to meet in this fashion is enough to strain the bounds of believability. When plot developments cause Kaladin's power shifts I don't mind so much. The losing-the-powers segment and the regaining-the-powers scene work great for me (and yes, I too think that the scene where Kaladin regains his powers is pretty awesome. So is the fight with Szeth afterward, both before and after Kaladin arrives). It's the fact that he loses his powers juuust in time to fall into the crevace and wander around with Shallan that gets to me, and that he gets them back juuust in time to save Dalinar. I kind of give the latter one a pass because it's near the end of the story and I've been conditioned to accept last-minute rescues at the climax of a tale, but the earlier one bothers me. Perhaps more than it should, but I feel that the second book stretches coincidence of timing in a way that the first one didn't.

I very much prefer WoK to WoR. The Bridge Four stuff is all great, much better than almost everything Kaladin gets in WoR. I also preferred Shallan the aspiring scholar/plotting thief to Shallan the hanger-on-around-camp. I thought Kaladin's flashbacks were better than Shallan's, too; though to be completely honest I find most of the flashback scenes boring in general. Most of the secondary characters and the interludes, I admit, are much better in WoR. Dalinar and his sons are also better in WoR than they were in WoK. But the plot in general feels much more forced: Jasnah "dies" at just the right time for Shallan to be able to do her own stuff around camp, Kaladin loses his powers at just the right time for him and Shallan to be able to wander around in the canyons, Kaladin gets his powers back just in time to save Dalinar, etc., etc. This is to say nothing of pretty much all Shallan's and Kaladin's interactions, which feel incredibly forced (e.g., Shallan just happening to bump into Kaladin before she reached camp, while just happening to be impersonating a queen, while just happening to be in a position to want to steal his boots, all so that the two characters can get off on a sour note). It's like the two characters have anti-synergy together. I blame the forced romance between them. Finally, I can't think offhand of a single exciting scene anywhere in the first half of WoR. Not one I'd be excited to re-read, at least. So on the whole, WoK gets my vote by a significant margin.

I'm pretty certain there's a line saying that emeralds are most valuable because they can produce food. I don't remember where it is, though, other than somewhere in TWoK.

In isolation, I think the new one is slightly worse than the old one, which seemed perfectly fine to me. I never got the "Kaladin killed him in anger" vibes from the old fight that other people seem to have gotten, and in my opinion the new fight makes Kaladin seem even more callous. The new fight's also more...what's the word...rough? Unpolished? I don't know, it just seems a bit weird. Kaladin doesn't seem to have a convincing reason to divert his blow to Szeth's wrist. But even if you suppose he did, why did Szeth lose his stormlight and fall? Was it because Kaladin cut his arm, somehow severing the bond to his blade, even though when Kaladin's arm was severed earlier he didn't lose his stormlight bond? Was it because Szeth, after years of refusing to die by his own hand, suddenly just gave up and said, "Well, I guess I'll kill myself now"? It just doesn't make sense. Plus, unless it was changed, I remember that Nalan said something about the brain needing to be intact in order to resurrect someone. You know what wouldn't likely leave the brain intact? Falling hundreds of feet through a highstorm onto the rocks below. Sure, Nalan could have caught him as he fell, but in that case there wouldn't be a need for a resurrection, either. It all just doesn't make as much sense anymore.

I'm not sure why everyone is saying they should lock Sadeas up. He's a shardbearer. You can't lock him up without his tacit permission -- not without taking his blade first, at least, and good luck getting him to surrender it for the requisite week or two. Dalinar even says at one point that the only options with a shardbearer are to let him go or kill him (surely an oversimplification, but you get the point). That said, I don't think Adolin was in the right, either. I don't see anything honorable in murdering someone, even someone like Sadeas. Maybe it should be done, but that doesn't make it right. I kind of hope that Adolin doesn't go the Radiant route, partly for that very reason (and partly because there are already enough Kholin Radiants).

For what it's worth, I also interpreted that passage as saying that the Skybreakers were good at debating. It's probably not a supernatural ability, since it's one for which "...no specific spren or Surge grants capacity...."

I think you're overthinking this a bit. Assuming the Ars Arcanum in the back of the books is correct, the Windrunners have the "gravity goes this way now" power and the "stick these two things together very strongly" power. I don't have a quote handy, but I'm pretty certain Szeth uses the second ability during some fights.

To address your points: Pattern was quiet all the time he spent "dead" (at least, as far as we know). Syl was less subdued, though still not terribly loud or frequent. Then again, neither Shallan nor Kaladin were doing terribly un-Radiant-like things in the meantime, while Szeth was going around assassinating people, which violates the First Ideal in so many different ways. Kaladin might have "killed" Syl, but Szeth kept twisting the knife in the wound. I agree with Kaladin and quite possilby Shallan having used Stormlight in minor ways without being aware of it. Same with Dalinar, for that matter. My point was that Szeth could have had a bond and still been disbelieved by the Stone Shamans and subsequently been declared Truthless. As far as Szeth's bond being too weak, I'm not sure I buy that either. We have plenty of examples of people not consciously aware that they're bonded to a spren. And I would think that breaking even just the First Ideal would be enough to "kill" the spren. If you're suggesting that Szeth would have attracted a highspren (which I've seen referenced enough on these boards to assume is a Skybreaker spren) because of his adherance to the law, I agree it's quite possible. But Nalan also says that Szeth seems a bit too emotional for the Skybreakers, so it seems to me quite reasonable that Szeth might have attracted a different spren as well. And anyway, assassinating people -- breaking the First Ideal, not to mention the laws of whatever land he happened to be in at the time -- is something that I imagine would "kill" even a Skybreaker spren.

Not necessarily. Kaladin and Shallan both had bonds long before they learned how to draw in Stormlight, much less surgebind. In Shallan's case, apparently way, way before. Given Szeth's dedication I can easily see him attracting some sort of spren. She only screamed at first, yes, but Kaladin could hear her weeping for quite a while longer. Plus, I got the impression that Syl was screaming in pain; I imagine Szeth's spren would be screaming in horror. I'm not sure what sort of spren Szeth would have attracted in the first place, but having your Radiant become the biggest mass murderer alive probably wouldn't fit so well with what it had in mind.

I figured that Szeth had a broken spren bond. My theory is that he once had a bond that got snapped at some point like Kaladin's did. Even after the bond was broken, Kaladin could hear Syl crying occasionally. It doesn't seem to much of a stretch to me to suppose that if Kaladin could hear his spren crying, Szeth might well hear his spren screaming. Basically, I think that Szeth thinks he's hearing his victims scream, but in actuality he's hearing his spren.

Well, like I said, I don't think we have enough information yet to draw a conclusion. But it's entirely possible that the two uses of Shadesmar require different abilities. We've seen tranformation (where you basically have to convince the thing to change by bribing it with Stormlight), but we haven't seen transportation yet. Maybe it requires a different set of skills.

I got the impression that the spren were looking out for people doing what they want to see happen. Like Windrunner spren would look out for people who keep their word, for instance, and Skybreaker spren would look for people who follow the laws. But the spren don't read minds. They judge only by actions. As long as someone always followed the laws, regardless of the reason that he did so, he'd attract the appropriate spren. I'm arguing that the first Radiants would have had good reasons (following the laws because it's the right thing to do, keeping their word because it's the right thing to do) but that later Radiants might not have (following the laws so they can get superpowers, keeping their word so they can get superpowers). The spren wouldn't have noticed a shift in their Knights' motives because there wouldn't have been a shift in motives to notice, and again, as far as I'm aware the spren can't actually read minds. There are also ten books, and so far Brandon's been burning through the oaths at about 1.33 per book (judging by Kaladin, who along with Dalinar's the only person we've seen start from zero oaths). Considering that most of the "awesomeness" of a Knight swearing a new oath is used up when the first one does (no one's going to be very awed when Renarin swears another oath or two and gets a glowing Shardblade. We've seen Kaladin do it already, so we don't need to see it again), and the five we're promised now are barely going to last us through the first five books, I suspect we'll see more oaths. It's similar to the situation with Mistborn. Sixteen metals (or fourteen, or however many were actually covered in the first trilogy) were enough for the first few books, but more were required to keep up novelty in the next books. Novelty will be required here as well, and more oaths is an easy thing to mine for it. You know, that's a good point. I seem to remember more sources than just a single complaint about the cost of travel through oathgates, but I'd have to do a re-read to be sure. The source may not have been reliable. Then again, we're not likely to get any on-screen actions of Recreance-era Radiants, corrupt or otherwise, either. Dalinar's visions were our only completely reliable glimpse into the past, and it doesn't look like he's getting any more of them. On the other hand, even if the complainer were just a whiney rich person, that still doesn't really excuse the increased costs. I mean, these gates can transport thousands of people at once. The cost in time to the Radiants is effectively the same no matter how many people want to use the gates, and the cost in stormlight on a per-person or per-pound basis is presumably fixed as well. Given any sort of reasonable transportation schedule between gates, I can't see much of a reason for increasing the cost.

I don't claim to be know about the rest of your post, but I think I can answer this one. The Orders can all be placed in a circle connected by their surges (like if the Windrunners were first, the Skybreakers would be next), so if you just go in the list in one direction, each order has a "first" surge and a "second" one. (The "first" and "second" part is arbitrary but consistent. If you traversed the list in opposite order, which surge is first and which is second is interchanged, but the point stands.) The other part of the Gleeman's claim, I think, is that each order is comparatively better with one of their surges than the other, and that the spren's appearance reflects the primary surge. I don't think we have enough information to know if this is correct or not (ideally, we'd want to know the comparative abilities of Radiants from at least three consecutive Orders), but it does seem plausible.

Well, the Oathpact was, presumably, some sort of deal between Honor and Odium. For both parties to agree to it, there'd have to be a bit of give-and-take on both sides. That said, I also like the idea of the whole torture thing not being part of the original intent. Maybe...the Tranqueline Halls? Weren't they lost to Odium? And isn't that where people go when they die? So maybe the original deal was something like "You can come fight on Roshar during the Desolations, but afterward you have to go hang out in the Tranqueline Halls." This is a fine deal for the Heralds...until Odium conquers the Halls. Now the deal is literally a hell of a lot worse.

You know, that line makes a lot more sense if one assumes that Talenal is the Ancient of Stone referred to. I had figured it refered to some as-yet-unintroduced spren, but it makes a lot more sense if it refers to the Herald. That said, I don't see how it would contradict my "theory" (I put the word in quotes because I figure it's more likely to be false than true; but it's still the best explanation I have currently). There has been hundreds if not thousands of years since the K.R. disappeared. Even if some of them had gone to Braise/the torment place and taken some of the heat off of Talenal, there's been plenty of time elapsed for the whole lot of them to be broken in the interim. Well, it would make some sense for Bondsmiths to be able to affect the spren bond, since 1) the name itself can be taken to imply something of that nature, 2) it would explain how the parshmen were trapped in dullform, and 3) the Stormfather seems to have some (rather limited) sort of power to determine whether an oath is acceptable or not. I wouldn't exactly call it a preponderance of evidence, though. Not so much tricking the spren, as doing what the spren want for less-than-noble reasons. Like someone might follow the law in order to join the Skybreakers. He's actually following the law, so his spren is happy. But the reason he's following the law isn't because he thinks that following the law is the right thing to do, it's because he wants to be a Skybreaker. He's doing it for selfish reasons. The result would be a group of K.R. who don't care so much about doing the right thing as they do about keeping their spren satisfied. They're in it for themselves, not for some greater good. I wouldn't think it would be lending the bond. It's just lending the Shardblade. It's not any different or any more intimate than when Shallan lent her sword to Kaladin -- Pattern was still 100% bonded to Shallan. The Oathblades can just do a bit more for their wielder than Shardblades can.

Hey, no appologies necessary. I asked for critiques, and I'm happy to have them. It'd probably be boring here if we all just agreed politely with each other. But now I'll try to respond to your points: Kaladin can act as a Windrunner at two oaths. Presumably he can do more at five oaths. And then at ten oaths, his blade makes it so that he can act as a Windrunner (which he could do already), but use stormlight less efficiently? Color me confused.No, at ten oaths (or however many are required), his blade makes it so that anyone he gives it to can act as a Windrunner. It's like when Kaladin used Shallan's blade, he didn't get the Radiant abilities -- presumably he would have at least habitually sucked in stormlight if he'd been able to at the time. Sure, whoever he loans Syl to wouldn't be as good as an actual Radiant, but it's a big step above just giving someone a regular shardblade. And it's not like Kaladin would be any worse a Radiant as a result. The Knights became corrupted and were only pretending to be moral so they could get some amazing advantages. They are so corrupted that when they learn of something, they abandon their advantages and allow themselves to be slaughtered. Color me more confused.Maybe I didn't explain this very well. Here's a fairly representative example: I'm reasonably law-abiding, but not slavishly so. I jaywalk at times, and I sometimes speed on the freeway. But if someone told me tomorrow that I could join the Skybreakers, learn to fly, heal instantly from wounds, etc., and all I had to do was never ever break a law, you can bet that I'd instamtly become the most law-abiding citizen you ever saw in your entire life. But then say I join the Skybreakers and later find out that the catch is that when I die I get to burn in hell for eternity. I'd quit the order the very same day. I posit that the Recreance-age Radiants were mostly people like me. Regular people. Not bad people, necessarily, though I'm sure they'd have quite a few bad apples as well -- but definitely not the sort of hyper-honorable people who're immune to graft and who'd stick around even if it meant eternal suffering as a result. If the Heralds do not return to Braize within a given amount of time, a new desolation starts. The knights somehow get sucked into the Oathpact so they have to return to Braize also. The knights stick around for millenia after the last desolation and no new Desolation happens. Color me totally confused.Braize is the place of torment? Well, I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here, but I'm also not sure that I agree with the statement "If the Heralds do not return to Braize within a given amount of time, a new desolation starts." For one, had that been the case, it seems that there wouldn't have been the huge Desolation-free period between the Heralds abandoning their oaths thousands of years ago and the present-day Desolation. For another, there's a line from the Diagram stating "Obviously they are fools The Desolation needs no usher It can and will sit where it wishes and the signs are obvious that the spren anticipate it doing so soon" which indicates to me that the people trying to stop the Desolation by killing the K.R. are misguided. As above, thanks for the welcome and the compliment. I'm not aware of any restrictions placed on the Nahel bond. Ishar was a Herald, so I'm not sure how he'd get to place restrictions on it anyway...I can't really say much about that. But as to why Amaram didn't attract a spren, I'd say that it's because he focuses on appearing honorable, not actually being honorable. He focuses on having been seen to follow the law and having been seen to keep his word, but he breaks both the law and his word at will, provided he can get away with it. But the spren watch completely unseen, for the most part, so no Skybreakers or Windrunners for Amaram. The spren would see even the actions he keeps hidden from men and reject him as a result.