Numuhuku

18 hours ago, StanLemon said:

Pewter is more than that though. Tiny little Vin was able to almost casually slay Koloss with a sword that was larger than she was so the strength Pewter gives would still be better. Then you get all the other physical boosts Pewter gives that are strictly better. Only the endurance compares and only the healing is straight up better for Stormlight.

It's also worth considering that Pewter gives a fixed physical boost that's actually independent of your own physical capabilities. A bigger/brawnier pewter thug doesn't get a bigger magical strength boost, just his mundane strength added to that. It's why Vin being small allowed her to jump so disproportionately higher than a pewter thug with a foot or two on her (frankly Vin could probably casually out hop Singer War Form's while on pewter). Which is a big difference compared to Stormlight "merely" allowing the body to run at 100% of its theoretical limit for an extended period of time.

Course the healing is really the biggest deal. Stormlight by itself automatically makes someone something between a regular Bloodmaker and a compounded one. That'd be worth it even without all the other physical boosts. Much less the various surges Surgebinders possess.

28 minutes ago, Toaster Retribution said:

Another wierd thing about Kalaks involvement with the Sons of Honor is that they seem to be enemies with the Skybreakers (Helaran, part of the Skybreakers, was sent to kill Amaram). Despite this, Kalak appears to be on fairly good terms with Nale. Either they had a falling-out or Nale actually doesn't know that Kalak is leading a secret organization. The latter alternative is certainly more intriguing. 

Well remember in Venlis flashback that 

On 11/25/2020 at 9:15 AM, Tai-na said:

I am confused as to whether the listeners expected the Fused to return to Roshar when they summoned the Everstorm. They assassinated Gavilar in order to prevent the Fused from returning. As far as I understand it, they didn't want the Fused to come back and dominate their people. Could they have summoned the Everstorm in such a way that the Fused wouldn't have returned? Was summoning the Fused a way of acknowledging that they had no chance of winning the war against the humans without the help of the Fused?

The Listener's behavior was influenced by the combination of years of war with the humans driving them to desperation, and the fact that while in stormform (a regal form) they were subjected to Odium's influence even at the cost of their own self-interest or self-preservation.

It's also worth noting that the Listener's had a very partial understanding of their gods, since they only had the old songs to work off of. They didn't know what the fused were specifically or how they functioned in Odium's hierarchy. And that as RoW illustrates, even Venli and her inner circle were rather in the dark about what summoning the everstorm would actually curtail. 

I don't think it's too tricky to figure out what happened. We know that most of the Human's in the Roshan system fled their original home world after surgebinding left most of the planet wrecked. I think the Shattered plains were simply a micro example of what occurred on ashyn. High level surge binding transformed into weapons of mass destruction. What terrified the old Knights Radiant order into the recreance in order to abandon surgebinding powers.

3 hours ago, Alcatur said:

I don't think he "ordered" Amaram. Kalak issue is indecisiveness. It is pretty unlikely that he was clear and decisive, and Amaram sounds like a person who would seek justification. So my guess is that Kalak said something and Amaran interpreted it the way he wished. 

I'm not sure about that. Kalak might be indecisive, but the very act of founding the sons of honor confirms he's capable of extreme manipulation and duplicity. There's simply no way a herald started a "lets restart the desolations to restore vorinism!" club on good faith. He's been misleading his followers and treating them like patsies from the start. And I see no reason why he would have acted any less during Kaladin's enslavement.

If anything there are two things we really need to keep in mind about Kalak when it comes to judging his part in what happened with Kaladin and Amaram.

-Kalak would have innately known that a single full shardbearer would have been utterly inconsequential in the event of another desolation 

-Kalak would have had the familiarity with Radiants and Surgebinding to understand there were ways to explain a full shardbearer being defeated by an "ordinary" soldier outside of astronomical luck

Kalak knows the Sons of Honor having a full shardbearer does nothing to advance their purported goals, and certainly it does nothing to advance any of his ulterior ones. He has no reason to get excited over a transference of "mundane" shards amongst mortals. But has plenty of possible reasons as a herald to panic over a prospective radiant returning. To me that suggests that if Kalak said anything to Amaram, it was less out of concern for what was to be done with the blade and plate and more towards viewing Kaladin as a threat. And in light of how he's manipulated the Son's of Honor, I don't doubt he could have made a knee jerk decision to try to talk Amaram into executing Kaladin.

If Kalak suffered any indecisiveness, it's likely in that he wasn't able to convince Amaram to kill Kaladin outright at that time.

Dalinar progressing to become the next vessel of honor is IMHO a likely development latter in the series. Though naturally I'm not surprised that Brandon wouldn't be forthcoming on the matter either way.

Doesn't  hemalurgy require some what exact positioning with respect to the kind of metal being used? I didn't get the impression it was something you could easily do without some prior knowledge or experimentation. I don't think it particularly likely that Vin would have done it correctly by chance when killing the lord ruler. 

On 6/22/2019 at 10:32 AM, Gderu said:

What about listeners though? In their POVs they say that the spren is inside their gemhearts, and we never see the form's spren around them.

Well perhaps it's worth asking. Do the Listeners have a scientifically accurate understanding of how Spren bond to themselves? Parshendi characters in text have admitted that their understanding of how spren bonding should work doesn't explain how humans without gem hearts are capable of it. That inconsistency might make it worth asking how accurate their outlook is in general.

To further consider. An alien looking to understand how human physiology worked might be somewhat lead astray if they went by the perspective of an educated medieval human who ascribed to humorism. It's possible that the Parshendi's assumptions about how they bond with spren are incorrect.

2 hours ago, Wander89 said:

Rosharians are used to swords like blades being these mythical weapons and don't really have any other explanation for what they do. I'm sure they do notice that there is no gem in the hilt and does not disappear or appear like the Shardblades do.

Well again, it's worth noting that people familiar with shardblades might have an explanation for that by assuming the bearer had not yet fully bonded their shardblade. Perhaps due to the previous owner having died recently. And oathbringer did establish that the gem stones that allow bonding aren't integral to the blades themselves, and can even be destroyed. I don't think that historically speaking, it'd be that out there for someone to have to go into battle/campaign with a blade that wasn't fully bonded, or that had it's gem stone damaged.

People are probably over focusing on how odd a non-bonded Shardblade would be. At least in the short term.

(Actually, given that the gem stones that allow blade summonings/dismissing aren't native to the blades themselves, do we have any basis that Azure's shardblade couldn't be fitted with such a gemstone, and that Azure just hasn't had a chance/reason to try to acquire one yet? Might be a decent Brandon Question).

On 6/17/2019 at 10:22 PM, robardin said:

Remind me again, what is it about her blade that makes the Rosharans immediately consider it a "Shardblade", given that it has no gemstone, doesn't get dismissed or summoned but is kept in a sheath, doesn't burn people's eyes out but instead turns them gray as they die, and is the size of an ordinary sidesword rather than the usual "oversized", practically two-handed size of a normal deadspren Blade? Though the Fused assaulting Kholinar while she commanded the Wall Guard were also instinctively leery of getting too close to it?

I think to the average Rosharan, all those things are semantics for scholars to worry about. If you have a sword that can cut through stone, steel and flesh like its wet tissue paper, then for all they care its a shardblade. Technical definitions won't make someone any less dead if they get hit by it.

On 6/18/2019 at 1:00 PM, robardin said:

The only thing I'd object to is that Shardblades in particular hold such a special place in Vorinist society... Would you really "outrank most of Alethkar" and gain landholding status of the fourth dahn for having a twinkly sword that isn't oversized, can't be dismissed and summoned, doesn't burn out eyes, and feels heavier than it should instead of lighter?

Well does the twinky blade chop through stone, steel and flesh like wet tissue paper? Roshar's ultimately revere shardblades as practical instruments of war. And if a "weird" shardblade can do 90+% of what a "normal" shardblade can, I doubt they'd value it substantially less than a regular shardblade. At least anybody who had the imagination to think of it being turned on them.

13 hours ago, Okdes said:

Hoid is confirmed NOT a shardbearer 

But he could still be a creationist. 

On 4/23/2019 at 9:57 PM, Tiberius Gracchus said:

I hear some argue that this pairing would be made as a political arrangement. I don't get this either, Kaladin and Jasnah are both already committed to the same groups and organizations, a marital alliance would be redundant. Also neither of them would go along with an arranged marriage. Kaladin would be very uncomfortable making someone marry him, and Jasnah's love life and faith are the two subjects that she never bows to pressure on no matter how impractical or damaging it gets.

I really don't get the political aspect of something like that either. Radiants aren't hereditary. They're a "can you befriend/impress a spren?" meritocracy.  Marriage ties don't bind alliances/inheritance with future radiants the way they do for other kinds of property or titles. I don't see marriage between orders of Radiants as manifesting in bonds more significant than the personal level. And while I'm all for the odd crack shipping, I don't seriously see being a major thing between Jasnah and Kaladin for a boat load of reasons.

The main problem to me seems to be that stormlight healing is somewhat limited by the persons self-image of what their body "should" be like. So you can't really force them to grow body parts that they don't imagine as naturally being part of themselves. We've seen that with trying to heal injuries that people have ingrained as part of themselves. So I'd imagine that the same would apply if you wanted to force someone to grow a mass of malignant tumors on themselves.

The only exception I could imagine is if you had a person who believed their body *should* be filled with life threatening tumors. Then *maybe* stormlight healing would do that to them. Though that seems like it'd be an awful niche and situational way to use the healing surge.

As invocation said, we don't know how plate is formed.  So it's up in the air if even the advanced skybreakers have it.

Even if they did. We've only seen the skybreakers operating in the context as of a secret society. They might be able to summon shardblades with some plausible deniability, but shardplate might be too conspicuous and high profile for most of their activities. Nobody would expect "officers of the law" to show up for a raid in shardplate, and would absolutely question them being able to summon it onto their persons on command as we saw in some of Dalinar's visions.

On 4/21/2019 at 9:30 AM, robardin said:

I suppose a betongued Susebron ruling over a Court of Gods depleted of its highest ranking priests would have the power to overrule things, but why would he, all things considered? Unless BF's got some kind of redemption arc in his future? (Which would be a "writerly" reason that would need some justification in-world, IMHO)

I'd be more worried about the knock-on effects of the plot on any innocent, uninvolved Pahn Kahl citizens, which has to be the majority of them, suffering from an inevitable "collective punishment" type of thing. Especially if they'd worked for the government in some capacity, albeit outside the Court of Gods.

It'd be a *very* writerly. BF not only is deserving of being accounted for his actions, there's not a  whole lot of practical reasons to offer him much clemency. There are very few metrics of justice that would consider hanging BF for his actions out of the ordinary.

Unrelated Pahn Kahl citizenry being subjected to reprisal as you said is something that I think Susebron would be much more worried about.And it's possibly one of many plot points that could come up as far as Susebron and Ciri trying to step forward in actually running Hallaldran. 

Bluefinger isn't dead as of the end of warbreaker, but to be honest I don't see him as being long for this world. Even if Susebron isn't blood thirsty enough to want to specifically seek out his death, he's not likely to offer clemency to the man who tried to murder his beloved in cold blood from all the apparatuses of justice that could make good cause to have him executed. Such as treason, and heading a conspiracy that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of people, and attempted to cause many more.

Hopefully we get a chance to see more of it, since Warbreaker is one of my favorite cosmere novels. 

4 hours ago, Calderis said:

Exactly. The death and destruction of an entire city isn't something you can just cover up. 

The official story of how and why it happened was changed, and Evi's death in particular was lied about... 

But the destruction of the Rift still kept Dalinar as the hero in everyone's mind. Alethi society had no issue with that scale of slaughter. 

I'd have to reread, but I think the official story was that "nominally" the fire started accidentally, but given the Rifts traitorous actions (including assassinating Evi in the official narrative) it was considered totally justified.

You are right though. Nobody would come out and straight justify it directly and openly, but it was pretty obvious that lots of people had an inkling it was intentional.

Honestly I'd scale that up even, though I do imiagine similar proportions. Considering in my mind the basic warhorses shardbearers ride need to be gigantic to account for the weight of their riders under strain, a ryshadium needs to be an immense horse to handle it without strain. So this is a good reference. 

Though I'll admit my mental image was this, as goofy and over the top as it was =P

On 4/4/2019 at 9:48 AM, Gray to said:

With all this power given to just 4 highprinces, and with 6 more we don't even know about, it got me thinking: what is there left for the king?

Keeping all the specilized high princes in line. While each of them held great power, it being specilized in nature would mean that the high princes would have limited ability to act in complete independence of each-other. The high prince of war couldn't act with total independence since a high prince commerce would have significant control of purse strings. But a high prince of commerce wasn't totally powerful due to the high prince of information being able to appoint judges who cold control his actions.

Obviously it wasn't a fool proof system considering it fell to disuse by the time of the modern books, but it's not the most improbable of setups  I feel. 

41 minutes ago, Turin Turambar said:

Society does tend to dictate morality, though only to a degree. Most of the blame, therefore lies with Dalinor, though he can claim a small amount of innocence because of upbringing. 

Mitigating circumstances to be honest. Keep in mind while Dalinar's upbringing revered warfare, they also admonished the kind of things Dalinar did enough that his actions at the Rift had to be covered up. His society might have encouraged him in some regards, but he also had plenty others that would have let him know that what he did might have been wrong. Note Dalinar decided entirely on his own accord that murdering Tanalan as a child was an immoral action, before he had the influence of his wife to be less blood thirsty. Dalinar had the standing to recognize that burning the reach was an immoral action, but instead decided to embrace his anger at being betrayed.

Dalinar's culpability might be softened by degrees due by circumstances, but his conduct as the Blackthorne is still monstrous by many degrees and standards. Him accepting responsibility for that despite it all is a sign of his moral character. And excusing his actions too much is a blight against his courage to accept responsibility for his actions.

I think it's worth considering that Dalinar's actions at the rift are somewhat understandable. He DID try to take a peaceful route. And he WAS betrayed by the people who he offered mercy and compromise to. If Dalinar had taken Tanalan's head, and the heads of most of his officers, I don't think you could claim it was an unjust action.

But the thousands of civilians, and children, certainly didn't deserve to be burnt alive because their leader was obsessed with revenge and because Dalinar became consume by rage. Maybe Dalinar's rage had some justification by it, but that alone does not absolve Dalinar of his actions. And I think it says a lot about the man Dalinar would latter become that he's not willing to excuse his actions for the influence his culture or the thrill had on him. Burning the children of Rathalas was wrong no matter what enraged Dalinar to do it, even if his wife inexplicably ending up one of the victims of his wrath is what took Dalinar to properly recognize the horror of what he had done multiplied thousands of times over.

I don't think it's fair to compare Dalinar to Hitler, but I can't say the Blackthorne wouldn't be considered a war criminal by our modern definitions. 

On 4/5/2019 at 11:28 AM, Turin Turambar said:

How do you think Jasnah would feel when she finds out that she's wrong, and there is (was) a deity, and numerous underdeities (also known as shard things that are sort of like Valar)?

She might be surprised, but I don't think she'd be too broken up by it. Even Dalinar, for all his devout beliefs, accepted the fact that the shard honor being capable of death meant that he wasn't "really" the supreme God, and that there was a higher power beyond it. I'd say Jasnah would take the more materialistic stance that honor was simply an entity that happened to have a great amount of power, and as benevolent as he might have been, that in and of itself was no more reason worship him than it'd be to worship Jasnah simply because she had radiant powers that the majority of the population did not have. Dalinar might be inclined due to faith to believe in a higher power beyond the obvious limits of Honor, but Jasnah I say wouldn't be inclined to make that same leap.

On 4/1/2019 at 11:59 AM, WannabeWorldhopper said:

And it says that Shin are often mistaken for children, which suggests that they are at least a half foot shorter than the average. It also could mean that Rosharians have the epicanthic fold (eye fold) of most Asians. I've always wondered if that was true.

It's called out in the text that the Shin tend to be short (at least by Alethi standards), so I imagine it's a combination. They're shorter than Alethi by a noticeable amount certainly. And while I can imagine their eyes might be a "bit" wider than real world Caucasians for example, I never got the impression they were so wide as to make them look like bug eyed aliens. It's just that near everyone on Roshar happens to have eye folds, making the shins slightly wider then Caucasian eyes striking by comparison.

15 hours ago, Jofwu said:

Difference in time measurements: https://www.17thshard.com/forum/blogs/entry/633-rosharan-time-measurements/

Haven't been able to dig into this yet but... Some recent info about the size of Urithiru suggests that 100 Rosharan yards is about 380 (Earth) feet. If there's 300 Rosharan feet per Rosharan yard that means their feet are about 27% larger than ours. There's uncertainty, speculation, and a bit of error in that however.

I'm rather skeptical of those figures. That'd put an average six (Rosharan) foot Alethi man at 230 centimeters tall (7'6 earth feet). That's a bit hard to swallow given the number of non-shape shifting world hoppers on Roshar who don't immediately stand out by being 1-2 feet shorter than everybody else on the planet. 

41 minutes ago, Turin Turambar said:

I think Shin are the remnant's of humans when they came to Roshar, and the Parshendi were already there. I don't think there is a connection, but I could be wrong.

I don't know if I believe that. I see no reason to believe that the original human culture before arriving on roshar had particular prohibitions against walking on stone on their home planet. But it makes a lot of sense as far as an evolution against their initial prohibition against venturing beyond the initial part of Roshar that had been given them in the east by the parshendi.

Not sure if that suggests any shared cultural legacy between the Shin and the Horneaters, but it's just something that makes me ponder.