treblkickd

It's hard to imagine anything more evil, excepting perhaps genocide, than unilaterally revoking the personal freedom of an entire race. It seems obvious that the peaceful existence of the Parshendi for, what, millenia (?), unambiguously destroys any argument in favor of enslaving the parshmen.

My guess would be that that TC's are: Szeth, Jasnah, Adolin and Renarin, with either Adolin or Renarin being TC #3, so that the TC #3 PoV effectively replace Shallan's PoVs in Part 2. This would keep the PoV space on the Urithiru story arc while providing a different perspective on what's going on there. Eshonai would also make sense as a TC given her importance in the overall Stormlight Archive story arc, but until she's integrated more closely with other main characters I feel as though it's more likely for her to be a novelette in this book (similar to WoR I guess?). I have a hard time naming a leading contender for the second novelette with any number of characters making sense (Navani, Lift, Taln, who knows who else). I would also guess that what we see of Moash is likely to be in either an interlude, or in a series of PoV snippets at the end of chapters (similar to Adolin PoV at the end of Chapter 10). I don't think he makes sense as a character that gets a ton of screen time, but he does provide a nice opportunity to give us short glimpses into what's going on with the Diagram folks. My dark horse candidate for any TC or novelette role is May Aladar, just because let's be honest, no one is hotter right now.

Oh, well there you go, great news!

I certainly hope so! The first two letters, appearing in tWoK and WoR, respectively, where such fantastic sources of Cosmere info, and I'd love to see the exchange continue. Specifically, looking back over the first two Letters, there are a few statements/references that remain tantalizingly opaque. The best such example(s), I think, are: "Let me first assure you that the element is quite safe. I have found a good home for it. I protect its safety like I protect my own skin, you might say. " -- tWoK part 2 eipgraphs and "Have you given up on the gemstone, now that it is dead?" -- WoR part 4 epigraphs Both of these lines appear early in their respective letters, such that one might infer that they are related, but it's not at all clear. I would also wonder if Hoid might argue, in response, that the emerging circumstances on Roshar could result in Odium no longer being bound within the solar system, potentially confirming theories about the conclusion of the first 5 books of the Stormlight Archive. Who else wants to see a third Letter, and what do you think it might contain?

I'm jumping into the middle of this discussion, so apologies, but I think this quote/info from MB:SH is not directly relevant to the idea of investiture having intent. Specifically,

Not just a lot like, that sounds exactly like what Lift does with Progression, though maybe a less strong/fast version of it. The implication here is that all (or at least a significant subset of) Parshendi can surgebind, albeit at a weak level. Or perhaps that some Parshendi forms essentially bestow very weak surgebinding abilities. This could actually explain how the warform Parshendi are so strong/agile (i.e., able to leap chasms in the Shattered Plains). This idea of Parshendi as natural weak surgebinders also makes a ton of sense in light of the information from the Parshendi Song of Spren about the Parshendi being "broth" to men being "meat", in that men are capable of building strong bonds with spren, thus gaining strong surgebinding abilities. Parshendi, on the otherhand, may be universally able to acquire very weak surgebinding abilities via a low-level bonding process with the lesser spren to adopt their various forms.

I hadn't seen those WoB, thanks for posting! Firstly, the fact that a "Machiavellian" could potentially join either of the two orders does not logically imply that those two orders are universally Machiavellian, or that most of its members could not arrive at the conclusion that the KR as an institution had reached the point where they were undermining some fundamental moral imperative (such as coming to believe that enslaving an entire people is evil). That said, it's also interesting to point out that we believe one order "betrayed" the others at the Recreance, and that this actually fits quite well with the idea that most of the orders came to believe that they're very existence was undermining the ideals and morals that they hoped to advance, while some or part of one order (likely the Skybreakers?) secretly held back. I also don't think it makes sense to go so far as to say the first ideal has no realmatic significance. I've always thought about the ideals/oaths as somewhat external/arbitrary constructs used to understand the Nahel bonding process. The simple fact that the form of the oaths can differ drastically from one order to another points to the fact that they are a construct used to try and systematize the bonding process (which we know predates the Knights Radiant, and therefore the form ladder of oaths/ideals). To my mind the oaths, therefore, all represent a somewhat artificial, or externally applied, levels of advancement in the Nahel bond, and the oaths are all about intent, i.e., people actively embracing ideals/oaths/truths that are in alignment with the cognitive nature of the spren that they're bonding. In that framework the first ideal is certainly a step in growing the Nahel bond. I don't remember offhand exactly what, if any, advances Kaladin begins to make once Teft tells him about the first ideal in tWoK, but I *do* remember that he spends several scenes actively contemplating what the words of the first ideal mean. If he was making strides in his ability to use/control his surgebinding shortly after he beings thinking about the first ideal, then that would pretty definitively argue for it haven't realmatic significance.

Firstly, I don't think that it's clear from the books that Shallan and Jasnah would have condoned slaughtering all of the parshmen. Identifying them as a likely threat? Sure. Thinking about the Recreance, there certainly had to have been *some* kind of big, fundamental issue that arose to drive all (well, nine) orders to dissolve themselves. It seems to me that the most likely explanation for what that issue could be comes from examining the first ideal that's shared by all orders. The idea of enslaving an entire race of people strikes me as fundamentally contradicting the "Journey before destination" part of the first ideal. I don't see how anyone with an ethical bent that we would generally describe as "good" could ever support the idea of literally stealing the free will of an entire race of people. Any argument in favor of enslavement would have to lean on an "ends justify the means" basis, which is quite literally the polar opposite of the thinking that is espoused by the first ideal.

I love the Kaladin scene with the parshmen, and am relieved to see scenes that contradict the simplistic notion of entire people that were so-far promoted as "the evil voidbringers". It makes sense that the parshendi are, in fact, just people. I think there's a good argument to be made for the final battle lines in SA having humans and parshendi/parshmen on both sides, rather than being based purely or largely on race. That idea even jives a little with the info gleaned by sharp-eyed folk over on this thread, where the back of the Oathbringer advanced copies says something along the lines of, "This war is not, and never was, what they though it to be."

Great point. I would expand this even to point out that it's not clear that to the extent that we can know/guess at what Renarin sees, there hasn't been much in the way of visions of the future. Rather, he saw or knew about, at some level, an ominous thing coming, but he didn't necessarily have a clear idea of what was coming (the Everstorm). Renarin was generating a countdown, but in terms of "visions" or "seeing", that strikes me as more along the lines of being able to see a clock that no one else can, with the time ticking away. Seeing the countdown in real time does not mean that he knows what's at the end of the countdown. Even at the end of WoR you have Renarin pronouncing that everyone is "dead", but that's happening essentially as the Everstorm is being summoned, so it's not clear that he's seeing some vision of the future, but rather "seeing" (understanding?) on some intuitive level what the summoning of the Everstorm means for everyone (spoilers: it's bad). Also, regarding the OB "creepy" Renarin scenes, there's really zero evidence there to suggest that he knows anything about the future. Rather, the implication is that he's more aware, in some way, of current facts. Perhaps he can see that Adolin is lying, or concealing something. Maybe he can even sense that there is some duplicity going on with the second murder (i.e., it's being made to look like a serial event when it's actually not).

This was my first reaction as well, but if you inspect the Silver Kingdoms and modern era Roshar maps closely you'll notice that Kurth *is* actually in on Rishir, if only just barely. Rishir seemed to include basically all of the northern islands on Roshar. Edit: sorry for the duplication of Pagerunner above, looks like I'm too slow.

Wow, I didn't catch it at first but on the second read this is a pretty harsh burn by Lirin. The thing is that I think Kaladin needs these kinds of rebukes/reminders sometimes. The divine attributes of the Windrunners are protecting and leading, and while fighting/killing can sometimes be necessary means, they are not at all at the core of what his being a Radiant is about. On that line of thought, it's actually pretty easy for me to understand why Syl would be drawn to Laral. As a practical matter, she (Laral) has pretty clearly taken over the primary leadership role in Hearthstone, and is obviously on top of organizing and leading that community. An effective and respected town/city administrator would naturally align extremely well with the attributes of the Windrunners.

Personally, "foolish" isn't the one of the words I'd use to describe the existence of Odium. More like "extremely dangerous", but this thread wasn't started in reference to anything about Odium. I understand that it makes sense to see the Honor side of things (including the Stormfather) as being the side of the Honor-Odium conflict that is clearly more aligned with "good" than "evil", but the point I was making above is that it is important to keep in mind the distinction between being capital-g Good (i.e., an ethical good), and being more closely aligned with Good (relative to Odium, for example). Roshar is probably of the places where it is most important to remember this distinction because of just how strongly Odium lines up with what most people would consider Evil, which makes it very easy/tempting to default to make the mistake of simplifying things so as to think about opposition against Odium as being equivalent to Good. I couldn't agree more! This is exactly my point! The Shards on Roshar, and everywhere in the Cosmere, are power that is tied to certain emotions/ideals/intents, distilled. Those intents do not line up directly with the ethical dichotomy of Good and Evil. It is, therefore, important to distinguish between the distilled intent of a shard---even one that represents an ideal that seem largely positive, like Honor---and the ethical ideal of doing what is right (vs wrong). I would speculate that this distinction was at the heart of what caused the Recreance. Specifically, from Dalinar's vision of the Recreance it appears that the Knights Radiant were caught up in wars on Roshar that were clearly unrelated to the fundamental fight for survival against Odium/the Desolations. It is also clear from Dalinar's vision that the Radiants made a very conscious choice to abandon their oaths, kill their spren, and cease being Knights Radiant, which begs the question, what could make them do such a thing? My guess is that the Radiants became more and more disillusioned with what they were fighting for as their role became more and more political, and that they eventually reached a breaking point where many/most Radiants decided that they were doing more harm than good by participating in wars/conflicts between human factions on Roshar. Effectively, this would mean the Radiants coming to a realization that they, themselves, were participating in war/killing on large scales for reasons that have nothing to do with any real ethical Good. I haven't been a frequent user of these forums in recent years, and I'm definitely not caught up on all threads, so this idea is probably repeating ideas that have others have already posted (and I tip my hat to any such posts).

Great post! I had the same eerie feeling when I read that line from the Stormfather. For one thing, the Stormfather makes a statement here that seems, to me, to be absurd. Of course there can be foolish oaths, and oaths that can/should be abandoned/betrayed. An oath sworn in ignorance is a simple example. I would be generally disturbed by any ethical framework that uses "keeping all oaths, full stop", or equivalent, as its core tenet. I think that this kind of broadly dismissive thought coming from the Stormfather highlights the fact that Tanavast/Honor has never explicitly been a force for "good". The intent behind Honor is specific and exclusive; it's about binding oaths and following codes of conduct (i.e., the behavioral constraints on Radiants' powers), and the specifics of a given code of conduct are not all that important. It's already clear from what we know about the history of the Knights Radiant, and the conflict b/w different orders, that significant conflicts resulted from the different ethical codes of conduct of different orders. These conflicts would arise naturally from different orders of Radiants, all equally empowered by their spren bonds, but beholden to significantly different codes regulating what constitutes "good" or "right".

Infinite upvotes for Ursula K le Guin mentions! le Guin is one of the greatest writers/authors alive, period. Her novels/stories set in the Hainish universe are my favorites - The Left Hand of Darkness is an extraordinary piece of literature, and Four Ways to Forgiveness is basically a treatise on human empathy and how to be a good person. Her young adult fantasy is also excellent - e.g., the Earthsea books, and her more recent Annals of the Western Shore (a trilogy: Gifts, Voices, and Powers).

If we weren't on the Brandon Sanderson fan forum I'd probably think this post is just trolling. Sanderson does some thing exceptionally well. He has tons of ideas, and I feel like his true calling in life is to be the worlds greatest GM/DM. That said, Sanderson's prose has been a weakness in the past, though he's improved by leaps and bounds as he's written. For me, this actually has the effect of making it difficult for me to read/enjoy Mistborn and Elantriss relative to the more recent stuff (Warbreaker, Stormlight Archive). My one great wish is that he would improve with characterization; there's a huge overuse of internal monologue. I'd much rather learn what kind of person Kaladin is by watching the choices he makes (not just the big ones, but the little ones as well), rather than have to read pages upon pages of Kaladin talking to himself about why he's doing what he's doing. In terms of action and entertainment, several folks have mentioned the Dresden Files (I haven't read Codex Alera so I can't comment). Jim Butcher has his own strengths/weaknesses, but for the most part I think the Dresden Files are really fun, and they definitely build on one another so that book 10 has so much more going on (on many levels) than books ~1-3 or so. Harry Dresden has some of the same excessive internal monologue tendencies that you see in Sanderson PoV characters, though in that case the entire series is always shown from Dresden's perspective, so I guess it's more of a conscious mis en scene thing w/ the Dresden Files. If writing matters to you, then you should read Rothfuss. There are so many clever things he does with language, including combining some principles of poetry into parts of his prose. He's pretty clearly a perfectionist type. It's also somewhat popular to hear complaints about his main character, Kvothe, but my feeling is that Rothfuss isn't holding Kvothe up as a paragon of virtue - he's just as critical of Kvothe's flaws as we as readers are. And that's not complete speculation: I had the pleasure of playing a 6 hour table top RP session DMed by Pat Rothfuss set at the University, and it became very clear that Rothfuss considers Kvothe to be very much a tragically flawed individual. If writing *really* matters to you, then you should read everything that Ursula K le Guin has ever written. She's my favorite author in the world, and I find a kind of wisdom and insight in her stories that is just above and beyond. Stories by le Guin aren't generally based around high paced action at all, so if you're just reading to be entertained then you'll be disappointed. Margaret Atwood is also quite good (she's much like le Guin, but a half step below, to my mind).

That is really interesting. Guess it makes more sense though for the idea rather than words to create a bond with a cognitive entity. It's possible this is just Brandon's way of covering himself for changing the wording of oaths he has mentioned but hasn't put in print yet Oaths as ideas was always really the only sensible way for this to work. If oaths required specific words then that also requires them being said in a specific language, which introduces all sorts of weird problems (e.g., languages evolve over time).

Agee with TomR, here! I thought this info from the in-world WoR, along with the various Nahel spren interactions that we get to see (Shallan, Kaladin, and Dalinar) made it pretty clear that there really aren't exact words. Rather what seems to matter is that a surgebinder progress (or, ahem, journey) along a path of person/emotional/moral growth. For example: With Lightweavers, this seems to involve accepting truths about oneself (basically a journey of self-discovery). So the ideals are really just roadsigns along a specific path. For Windrunners it seems to be about accepting the role of protecting as "right". Kaladin's 2nd ideal is to protect those who cannot protect themselves, and you could actually interpret his 3rd ideal as a reinforcement of the 2nd ideal (ie, protect those who cannot protect themselves, even if I hate them, so long as the protect is right). This fits pretty well, conceptually, with the roadsigns-along-a-specific-path image. The "THESE WORDS ARE ACCEPTED" statements also strongly imply that it is the intent behind the Words that matter for progression. This is actually really sensible as it removes any potential linguistic/translation barriers to progressing as a KR. Requiring specific words requires a specific language for the ideals (just b/c translation is never a perfect 1-to-1 deal). Imagine how silly it would be to have a non-native speaker Radiant (of whatever language the ideals were created in) who was thinking and feeling the right things, but just kept mis-translating the phrase that they were trying to say and not progressing - that would be absurd. The question that remains is, I think, who is the final arbiter of a given ideal. The Stormfather seems to be the authority over the ideals that Kaladin and Dalinar speak (or perhaps he's just sort of like the court-side announcer for Kaladin, and Syl is the one who gets to judge Kaladin's words?). In the case of Shallan it certainly seems like Pattern is the person (spren is people, yes?) who makes the call.

For one thing, we don't know what the Stormfather's feelings toward Cultivation (or more precisely, the person who holds the Cultivation shard) - it just doesn't come up - and after learning what we do about the Stormfather in WoR, I think it makes a lot of sense to hypothesize that the Nightwatcher is a large splinter of Cultivation, similar to the Stormfather/Honor.

Oh good, just finished WoR today. Holy crap. Anyway... I agree that stormlight healing seems the obvious explanation here, especially in light of the kind of healing Kaladin accomplishes almost instantaneously several times in WoR. The other thing to consider, which was pointed out above, is that we don't really know yet how advanced Jasnah's Nahel bond is. Considering that five years pass b/w the night that Jasnah "meets" her spren face-to-face, and the start of WoK, it stands to reason that she's probably quite advanced. We also know that she's been targeted for assassination numerous times before, so it's reasonable to assume that she knows whats up re: stormlight healing and how best to pull it off. The only real oddity/unknown here is the burn marks. There were torches on the ship during the attack, so maybe Jasnah got burned at some point and only had a limited supply of stormlight to heal with. If that's not the case then it'd have to be speaking to her adventures after the attack (which I'm sure we're all curious to learn about).

I've tried to peruse all of the spren/shardblade threads floating around but couldn't find anything recent that really talks about what we know re: spren disliking shardblades. My point with this thread is that it is not clear that all Nahel bonding spren have an aversion to shardblades. So what do we know? Forewarning: sorry about the length - this was all very much a thinking-out-loud kind of deal. 1) Syl doesn't like them. She is repulsed by Dalinar's shardblade, and also (I think?) mentions being drawn to Kaladin in part based on his choice to refuse the shardblade that he wins. As far as I can recall, however, Syl never provides justification for how she feels. It comes of as instinctual - and to speculate a little - has a similar feel to her offhand comment about Cryptics (which she cannot explain or justify when asked about it). 2) Shallan has a shardblade, and has also recently acquired Pattern. Shallan has had a shardblade for quite some time, but has also had no trouble attracting a spren over that period. One could argue that b/c Shallan doesn't summon her shardblade often (or at all?) that Pattern might just be ignorant of it, but that seems very unlikely. 3) Wyndle, who seems to have retained more knowledge/memory than Syl or Pattern since crossing over, doesn't immediately recognize the shardblades (or honorblade + shardblade) that Darkness and his minions have. He just says, "There's something about those weapons they carry...", which seems to express mild curiosity and an acknowledgement that they aren't normal weapons, but no distaste or animosity. Also possibly relevant: Wyndle boasts about creating gardens that both Cryptics and honorspren enjoy, implying that he occupies some sort of neutral position in spren politics. 4) The Knights Radiant of the past obviously possessed both Nahel bonded spren and shardblades; we've seen this first-hand with Wind Runners, Stonewards, and (presumably) Dustbringers. 5) Renarin apparently sees a spren, with implications that it is a Nahel bonding spren, and he is reluctant to accept a shardblade, grimacing when he receives it. There's lots of vague speculation involved in including this last point here just b/c we don't *know* that Renarin sees and/or is developing a bond with a Nahel spren, but this seems to be the consensus best-guess for what's going on with him. From #'s 1 and 2 above, along w/ Jasnah's comments about the Honorspren/Cryptic tensions, it could well be that Syl's dislike of shardblades is a symptom, or in some way related to, the disagreement between different factions of spren. #3 doesn't provide much in the way of hard evidence, but I think everything we see from Wyndle is consistent with the above. #4 strongly suggests that whatever dislike for shardblades that Syl/Honorspre or a broader subset of spren have is probably a relatively recent (ie post-Recreance) development. #5 could imply that Renarin's spren - assuming that he's getting one - is on the Honorspren side of any spren politics. All together, I think there's solid evidence that some spren not liking shardblades might be more of a political thing than anything to do with a fundamental evil-ness of shardblades. Another alternative is that the shardblades that we've seen shunned by spren (Dalinar's, the one Adolin gives Renarin, also Amaram's?) have both been in circulation among the Alethi of late, and we've seen ample evidence of the Thrill (assumed to be Odium-related) as a pretty widespread thing in Alethela. So it's possible that spren (or maybe still just some spren) are turned off by specific shardblades, depending on how they've been used recently, and/or what flavors of shard/investiture (assuming the Thrill involves any Odium related investiture) may have touched them recently. Or perhaps the most likely conclusions is that both of the above are going on, i.e., honorspren are repulsed by Odium while those less aligned with Honor are not, and it's divides such as this that lead to spren politics.

Given that we've only seen 1+2 ideals, it's tough to extrapolate out and guess at the others. I wouldn't be surprised if the "I will ____ those who ____" construction turned out to be specific to just the second ideal for each order, if for no other reason that I think you would start to end up with some weird/awkwardly phrased ideals. Of all of the other Cosmere magic systems we encounter, the ideals remind me most of the commands to Awaken in Warbreaker, and in that system we know phrasing and clarity of thought/intent is important. I'm not claiming the following is true, but I think it'd be both a little funny and appropriate if an awkwardly stated ideal - meaning a sentence that sort of gets to the point of an ideal but is really clunky about communicating it clearly - resulted in less of a powerup than an elegantly phrased ideal.

It does, so thanks and no worries. I'm sorry I got under your skin - that certainly wasn't my intention.

I voted Shallan, but as mentioned in this thread, we're going to have to start learning at least ~4-5 ideals per book so hopefully Kaladin, Shallan, Dalinar, Jasnah, and Renarin all chime in with one at some point in WoR. Jasnah is a good candidate to have already spoken a few so maybe she can real a few of them off for us in a PoV chapter or something.

So given 10 orders, each with four unique ideals for 40 total ideals (I guess 41 w/ the generic first ideal), I wonder if we're even going to be explicitly given the precise phrasing each and every one? The alternative might be to reveal the gist of some ideals, perhaps from chapters like Morsk points out above. There are 10 books max, which would demands a pretty fast past of ideal-revealing, and we really only had the one unique ideal revealed in WoK, so there's catching up that needs to be done. It would be cool if we learned many of them in ways that are similar to the Lift interlude, but in any event the pace is really going to have to pick up.