Numuhuku

I've been sort of wondering about this ever since I finished Alloy of Law. I figured part of Wax's actions against the Set were trying to look into this (particularly since the two other kidnapped women are inlaws), but I can see how the short length of time for Shadows of Self, and the relative urgency of dealing with Bleeder demanded everyone's attention. The description for Bands of Mourning seemed to put more emphasis on the Set, so I figure that will be dealt with then.

Certainly. If for no other reason, than her own good. Though I can't help but think there might be some potential contention about what to do with paalm/lessie *after* she'd been stopped. I'm not entirely sure Wax would happily hand his 'wife' over to the people who took her away from him in the first place. Which does bring about a grim thought. How convenient was it for Harmony's plans for Wax that Paalm remove herself from the equation? Finding out his 'wife' was alive would have done a lot to uproot Wax from settling into Elendel. Not that I think Harmony actually controlled Paalm and made her take her own life (it'd have been easier to just make her not tell Wax anything), but it could be a dark suspicion on Wax's part for quite awhile.

It seemed sort of a tentative answer to me. I have some sneaking suspicion that there might be some specification behind that answer that Brandon didn't elaborate on, that might not have applied to Bleeder messing around with Hemalurgy.

When did that happen? I was under the impression that accessing a metal mind required active Feruchemical abilities. Since Bleeder could only have one active Feruchemical or Allomantic spike in at a time, I'm not sure how she would manage compounding.

I think the universe just performed some kind of intricate WWE finishing move on Wax at the end of the book here. I'd actually felt things were a bit weak in terms of building off of the events of the previous novel (especially with regards to the Set), but I think it ended up more than meeting my expectations. I gotta admit though. Kind of surprised nobody (as far as I've checked so far) has drawn comparisons to Sazed's loss of faith yet. There's something ironically delicious about it all. The random tragic death of a loved one for Sazed shattering his faith, yet as god, he deliberately* goes and hurts Wax even worse. I suspect that this will be a major stumbling point for Wax in Bands of Mourning...or perhaps for even longer than that.

Seems doubtful, unless the dancing girl happened to die for some reason, and Paalm was merely opportunistically scavenging the bones. I don't think Harmony or the other Kandra would have tolerated Paalm offing random showgirls for their bones.

I can think of several points -Potential to salvage ancient fabrials and shards -Potential gate access to anywhere on the continent -Elevation and mountains encircling the city protect from both Everstorms and High storms -Aforementioned geography making it VERY secure from conventional attack -Theological importance to the Vorin peoples as a holy city

Wasn't really thinking so much resentment, as bafflement. And I suppose I had Lift in mind more. I think anyone in the medical profession would be stupefied that the likes of HER became the ultimate healer on Roshar. "His body is covered in 3rd degree burns, his femur has suffered a compound fracture, and there's a spear lodged in his spine!" "Imma need three entire chickens for this!" "...Stormfather, why do you mock us?" Well to be fair, the combat applications of the Windrunner surges are immediately useful for combat. So a soldier ending up like that seems rather reasonable. I think it's makes sense that Kaladin ended up the way he did, but there is a bit of irony that someone with so much talent and inclination to heal became a windrunner*. I don't expect it to cause existential angst or anything, since it's not fundamentally any more odd than a surgeon becoming a soldier, but it's one of those things I'd expect to be commented on. *Though I suppose in a way, it's better that trained healers don't become progression surgebinders. A surgeon can't use regrowth and the scalpel at the same time. So having a healing surge binder AND a surgeon to deal with many injuries is probably a better option. Especially if the stormlight supply is running low. This is a very good question actually. Kaladin DID break his legs kicking a shardbearer once, but the injuries weren't compound, so hypothetically they wouldn't have needed to have been reset to heal. Am interested if there are any particular restraints to regrowth though.

The way I see it, is that while Kaladin was behaving honorably enough to attract Syl, there wasn't the necessary crack in his soul to fit the Nahel bond. So it was only when he broke, and slowly began to recover, the Syl began to make great strides in self-awareness.

Basically what Edgedancer said. I don't think there'd be much point in noting the surge of regrowth as a distinct ability, if all the Knights radiant had the intrinsic ability to heal others with stormlight. I'm thinking the only exception would be in the case of certain Radiants being able to take on Squires. The orders seem to be fairly specialized in that regard, which I find more interesting. I'm interested in seeing what Kaladin thinks of the progression surge. He's not a doctor, but he does value his surgical skills. I can't help but feel that having a fop like Renarin (or worse, an airhead like Lift!) having such "unearned" healing abilities might strike Kaladin as wrong. Figure he might also mention it strange that the trained surgeon didn't end up as one of those healing Radiants.

I wouldn't go that far. I don't think Hoid is supposed to have ever gotten any Feruechemical powers. And compounded/flared emotional allomancy while powerful, is hardly subtle. Shallan would have noticed if Hoid had tried something so brazen on her, and it probably would have frightened her. Remember how Breeze described subtle emotional allomancy as augmenting regular methods of persuasion. Most of Shallan's reaction to Hoid had to do what he said. Any allomantic manipulation was just nudging it along.

I certainly wouldn't be surprised if it was Allomantic. Soothing/Rioting is a useful augmentation when trying to talk to people.

Implication is that sufficiently ranked Radiants of some orders have "squires", who they divest a portion of their power to. It seems to be a function of their emotional bond with Kaladin through bridge 4. Teft did mention that all the members of Bridge 4 were faintly glowing at the end of Words of Radiance. We also saw regular soldiers serving alongside a radiant in one of Dalinar's visions having their weapons suddenly glow before going into battle.

Hemalurgy is an interesting theory (one that I thought up), but it doesn't explain them exclusively targeting women, and them focusing abductions based on bloodlines over specific abilities. There are plenty of much less conspicuous mistings who they could have targeted over these specific noble women.

I'm not really a fan of that theory. The ecology on most of roshar seems too alien to be something that evolved from earth like flora and fauna. I don't see how you get from modern earth style crustaceans to an Axe Hound. The evolutionary jump seems even more vast when consider the greatshells (some of which are the size of islands) which have a distinctly non-terrestrial spren/stormlight oriented life cycle. It also begs the question. If most Roshar life is supposed to be radically evolved terran life forms...why are all the distinctly avian and Mammalian creatures from Shinovar so static in their appearance? Wouldn't a time span that allowed hermit crabs to evolve into greatshells also allow horses/mice/birds to evolve into different species as well? I'm not sure how you explain an evolutionary gap like that. It seems that earth like organisms being transplanted to Roshar is a much simpler explanation (but besides humans and small pests, only really flourished in Shinovar due to the ecology). There's even some textual basis for this theory. We know that the Greater Roshar star system has three inhabitable planets on it. And the whole mythology behind the Tranquiline Halls seems like it could easily fit humanity being driven off a terrestrial planet to Roshar by Odium.

No. Lopen knew perfectly well that he only had one arm. He just never allowed that to make him think of himself as a cripple. Since he didn't have that mental handicap, there was no obstacle for him using stormlight to heal his body. Kaladin's problem is that he not only was a slave, but be thought of himself as a slave for a long time. He still hasn't quite gotten over it in the same way the rest of Bridge 4 has. Because of that mental barrier, he can't get rid of the slave brand.

I'm kind of on this train of thought. While there's some commonality between Great Shell's ability to morph and Parshendi form changing, this could just be an indicator that Parshendi are biomagically similar to the native Roshar life forms. Not that Odium purpose built Chasmfiends as his war machines.

I don't know if Kaladin will have a choice in the matter. There's kind of an apocalyptic nightmare war brewing that has the potential to wipe out all human life on the planet, and Kaladin holds the rank of a battalion commander in the Kholin army. Kaladin actually pressed Dalinar to put him in charge of all the Bridgemen if you recall. He can't just worm his way out of that duty. When push comes to shove, Kaladin is going to be there to lead those men into battle. And against inhuman horrors and monsters, the leadership of a radiant will be essential. And when light eyed officers and high princes end up among the innumerable casualties, don't expect Kaladin to end up with less responsibilities. I suspect one of the things that Kaladin will find himself being challenged on in this upcoming book is his own personal insistence that he doesn't want to be in charge.

Seems like they'd be pretty dangerous in organized warfare. It was mentioned that a well done line of forbiddance could stand up to cannon fire. So that's basically being able to set down field fortifications up on a battlefield at a moments notice. A combined arms assault by regular soldiers and chalklings would be pretty nasty. Massed rifle fire from a distance could prevent the enemy from forming a proper bucket brigade line, thus allowing the enemy position to be overrun by offensive chalklings.

Are any genes for hair recessive on Roshar? The impression I got was that if you inherited any hair genes from one of your parents, it showed up as a phenotype in some way.

Awww yeah! BlackThorn! Blackthorne! Blackthorn!

Well they do have horses. Nothing stopping you from getting milk from those, aside from the general rarity of horses on Eastern Roshar. I wouldn't expect that'd be something anyone but more wealthy Light eyes would consume, but it IS an alternative. I'd expect the only people on Roshar to have dairy as a regular part of their diet would be the Shin.

I'd prefer an animated adaption. Just because the world Stormlight Archives is set in is WAY too alien too faithfully adapt it on a realistic live action budget. And that's even before you get into the special effects that you'd need for shardplate or surge binding. This is probably a bit more trivial, but it'd probably also miss out on the fact that none of the races on Roshar really translate into anything on earth. I kind of like being able to imagine that the people on Roshar, while still human beings, are significantly different than any people I'd be able to meet in real life. Yes, but pretty much everyone on Roshar (aside from the Shin) are implied to have eyes with Epicanthic folds. Just because they have colorful hair and eyes doesn't imply they look Caucasian. I don't know if a dry desert is really an appropriate locale for a planet that's supposed to get hit by mega storms every few weeks. Roshar is supposed to be wet afterall. Also seems a waste to ignore the entire on land coral reef thing it has going for it.

Renarin having little black hair to me suggests there's just a smaller chance of him passing on black hair to any children he had. Not that it'd be impossible. It just means that it'd be very unlikely for there to be *much* black hair in any of his children.

Maybe if it was some extreme situation where the mother felt the father might find out about the illegitimacy, and felt she needed to take *desperate* measures to preserve the family as a whole. I could see *some* unbalanced individuals doing something like this. But that doesn't fit.The men in the Davar family loved and accepted Shallan, to the point of being willing to violently protect her. It doesn't seem a plausible motive. And as you said. Family resemblance is another key issues. Especially since genes for hair color on Roshar are almost never recessive. If you inherit genes for multiple hair colors, they almost always manifest in some way. Unless Brightness Davar had an affair with someone who had pure red Vedan hair, Just like Lin, it seems like it'd be very unlikely for the infidelity to go unnoticed.