treblkickd

I agree that it would cause a riot if all the dark eyes soldiers knew that this happened, but the chances of such a rumor getting out are awfully small. Given a scenario where a brightlord has a new set of shards and someone trying to spread a rumor that this brighlord took the shards from a dark eyes who killed the shard bearer, they'd have to overcome the hurdle of convincing people that a dark eyes did in fact kill a shard bearer, which happens almost never. It much easier to believe that a brightlord and his retinue took down a shard bearer. It's much harder in that scenario to buy into a dark eyes spearman killing a shard bearer. If, on the other hand, a brightlord admits that a dark eyes took down a shard bearer and then claims the dark eyes just *gave* him the shards, then I think the hardest-to-believe part of that story very quickly becomes the part about giving the shards away and the brightlord is likely to be called a big fat liar.

I'm sorry you don't like how I reply to your points, but that's not the same as me ignoring them. I really don't think it's an over the top assumption - it's stated multiple times in WoK that the common dream for a dark eyes soldier to claim a shard and move up in the world. You don't think that undermining hope would cause unrest? I'm not referring to your posts and yours alone, and I never said you were calling for Amaram's head (plenty of posts on this and other threads have, though). My posts on this thread aren't about you, so maybe don't take the fact that I disagree with you so personally? I think you're confusing my disagreeing with you as my insulting you.

1) I thought that WoK made pretty clear that perception would not have allowed for Kaladin to give Amaram the shards and go on his merry way - the trouble being that no one would have believed that this is what really happened. The response would have been, "Oh, right, the darkeyes just gave you the shards? Riiiiiight", with the common assumption being that Amaram stole them. That's the kind of rumor that could throw a brightlord's entire army into revolt, and a hunk of the kingdom into chaos. Kaladin's choice to refuse the shards is so contrary to what any normal dark eyes solider would have done that it threw everyone for a loop. And that's how Kaladin got Syl, and that's how we get to enjoy reading about them both. But also important is that Kaladin's choice is so contrary that it's basically impossible for anyone, Amaram, Restares, etc included, to believe that he really means it. It's like someone winning the lottery and then saying, "Nah, I don't want the money." It's more than reasonable to assume that this person will, at some point, look back and regret that decision. 2) I certainly never said that Amaram was a hero, or even an edgy/tatooed carebear. No one is saying he necessarily made the right, or best choice. He made a bad choice, and did a bad thing, which people do. In Amaram's case I don't think it requires an excessive amount of empathy to understand the circumstances that drove him to make a bad choice. 3) #2 above does not condemn Amaram as a bad person. I actually think that Amaram is nicely positioned to start down the path to become a Knight Radiant precisely because he made a bad decision that may have broken him a little. Imagine you've got a guy, Amaram, who's pretty decent - an honorable enough brightlord ("one of the good ones") - but he was never really faced with a hard decision before. Then when faced with a tough choice, he makes a the wrong call and that breaks him a little. "Cracks in the soul", isn't that the expression in the dust jacket cover? 4) I am turned off by all of the bloodthirsty Amaram revenge fantasies. As if anything other than his head on a pike would be a travesty of justice. What we have in Amaram is a minor character with the potential for a complex and fun plot arc. I will very easily admit that I don't limit myself to rooting for the Mary Sue characters. edit: spelling

I would argue that judgement requires context. A greater good argument doesn't have to be verifiable - the point is that there can be more than one interpretation to the best possible moral outcome of a decision. There isn't always (or even generally) a simple "right" answer. Down with determinism, I say. Moral determinism is unacceptable. Well of course we don't *know* the outcome of this hypothetical, but I don't think we have any good reason to believe that Amaram disingenuously offered the shards to Kaladin multiple times. Amaram is painted as a good, honorable guy, and his guilt and defensiveness at what he's doing is in line with a person who wants to do the right thing.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree - to my eye Amaram's guilt is in plain view in the scene, and I'm far from alone in acknowledging that. No one, including Amaram, is happy about what he's done. Amaram says straight up that he believes he is sacrificing a few dark eyed soldiers to save thousands. I think it requires some serious cynicism to flatly assert that Amaram is just lying about his reasons and motivations. He doesn't have to convince Kaladin of anything; if he just wants the shards, then he can just say so. The fact that he offers the shards to Kaladin multiple times is clear evidence that shard-wanting is *not* his motivation. Ascribing the worst possible motivations to Amaram requires mental gymnastics and only serves to paint him in a simplistic black/white way; BS tends to write characters that are more complex that. I just made a guess at what was motivating your interpretation of a scene, which is very much my right. Right now I don't have to guess that you're acting very self-righteously.

Fair enough, but the trouble here is that I don't think it's clearly religion that is driving Szeth's choices. Most of his references to Stone Shamanism come up with respect to walking on stone, or how stormlight is used, and in most of those contexts he's flaunting his Stone Shamanism beliefs. Whatever is driving Szeth's choices, I don't think it's his religion (it actually seems to be causing him to undermine his religion, as well as assassinate hordes of people). -- I didn't write anything off, I said that bad things had been done, and argued that they were chosen as the lesser of two evils. I think you need to reread the passage. Firstly, Amaram offered Kaladin the shards and Kaladin refused them. He spends hours being convinced to take the shards, at which point he explicitly expresses regret and guilt. He is openly defensive about what he's doing - Amaram here is *admitting* that what he's doing is villainous and wrong, but believes it's necessary. It takes a painfully contrived (and cynical) reading of the scene to deny that Amaram was torn and conflicted by his decision. Incidentally, I have read Warbreaker, and I've also read some Mary McCarthy, who said "We are the hero of our own story" some 50 years ago. This is the internet, a place where we share our opinions and perspectives. I'm sorry if you were insulted, that wasn't my intention. Reading your post I'm pretty sure I don't have a monopoly on the being-insulting. -- Quote Agreed, and it is disappointing. I'm more of a William James fan, myself.

The "greed" thing that's getting thrown around is just as absurd as the psychopath label. There's nothing in the text to indicate that Amaram is driven by greed for shards - he very explicitly is guilty about betraying his men, and very clearly agonized over his choice. This also relates to all the talk of "the ends don't justify the means", which I think is a phrase that is being misapplied here. Intent matters. Meaning well matters, and no decision is truly made in a vacuum. Killing people is bad but there are obviously circumstances where most of us would consider it ok. Stealing is bad but there are obvious circumstances where most of us would consider it ok. Morality isn't about obeying a discrete list of rules - it's *far* more complex than that. I think Amaram and Taravangian compare rather well, though the scales of what they do are quite different. What matters is that they've both made choices, and they both feel remorse and guilt regarding those choices despite having come to the conclusion that they're doing what's best. The point is that from all the evidence that we have, they are both weighing consequences and attempting to make a good choice. Taravangian is luring sick people to a hospital and then mass murdering a bunch of them. He thinks he can save the world by doing this. Whether he's right is irrelevant, just it's irrelevant whether Amaram is right about weighing the value of a few soldiers' lives against him wielding a shard in the process of doing whatever it is he's doing behind the scenes. People are wrong (ie., mistaken, misinformed, etc) all of the time and terrible things can happen as a result, but being wrong in and of itself doesn't make those people bad people. I don't think it requires too much imagination to at least understand the how and why of Amaram and Taravangian's decisions (where understanding them is not the same as condoning them). I'm not sure what is meant above about not having enough information about Szeth. He goes around murdering people en masse because a guy holding a rock tells him to. There are plenty of Szeth PoVs that make this pretty clear. He thinks to himself that it's bad to murder people, and he seems to be sad about it, but he keeps doing it. Why? Because the guy holding that rock says so. Szeth's apparent lesser-of-two-evils choice is between obeying the guy holding his oathstone, and, well, apparently anything else? That strikes me as delusional and/or insane, and I think makes Szeth one of the more unsympathetic characters in the book. tl;dr - I think a lot of folks would be well-served to read The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.

Generating a strong emotion response is fine, but words have meanings and you shouldn't just go around throwing the word "psychopath" at things because you don't like them. It's just confusing.

It's really fascinating to read the wide range of (often very strong) opinions on Amaram, especially considering how little screen time he's had up to this point. Like many of the character's we've met so far, Amaram has done some bad things. So far he's got a lot in common with Szeth and Taravangian in that he shows an awareness and/or remorse, but believes at some level that he's choosing the lesser of two evils. I think you have to construct an extremely contrived argument to place Amaram into a more extreme category of "badness" or "unforgivable-ness" than Szeth and Taravangian. In terms of sheer scale, both Szeth and Taravangian have probably been significantly "worse" than Amaram (though this kind of comparison is pretty silly given that "worse" here is wildly subjective and not well-defined, and not to mention the whole difference in screen time). Personally, I find Szeth to be the least sympathetic of the three, by far, just because it's not at all clear what would compel him to stick to this ridiculous "Follow orders, no free will." behavior. It's also baffling to see some of the posts in various threads that have labeled Amaram as a psychopath. There has been no psychopathy in what little we've seen of Amaram - quite the opposite actually. He very clearly expressed remorse and empathy when he screws Kaladin over. I guess we can chalk this up to how strongly folks seem to identify with and want to "stick up for" Kaladin.

Ah, ok, I think I follow you here. That said, the Brandon quote talks about it being possible (even easy?) to tell which spren are more of Honor vs more of Cultivation. Taking the fact that some spren are primarily Honor or Cultivation, your interpretation seems to imply that some spren (the Honor-y ones) would make surgebinders that are better or more powerful (or something along those lines). That's not a crazy idea, but it also does not strike me as having any particular evidence to support it.

The word of Brandon quote about spren being of Honor and Cultivation seems pretty straightforward. There are a couple words annoyingly missing from the transcription, but context pretty strongly implies that something like "entirely" is what belongs in place of the first "(something)". quoted from Aether's post on the previous page:

Yeah, Stasis sort of works, sort of doesn't, and you're right that it could lead to a road where Growth/Stasis are both related to time (de-/ac-)celeration. The other I threw out there was Entropy, and the use of that could actually also be thought about in terms of (de-/ac-)celerating certain processes. The issue with Entropy is that is could overlap or conflict with the existing surge of Division (depending on exactly how you interpret the meaning of "Division"). The trouble with all of this is that while Brandon tries to ground his magical effects in science (or at least think about the physical implications and of possible mechanisms for various magics), it's very unlikely that he ever comes up with systems that are sufficiently straightforward to be reconstructed from sparse evidence.

Oooo, interesting idiea. It's true that it's not at all obviuos how the Transportation-Gravity pairing would make sense, but we don't know enough about them to really say anything definitive. That said, I think a better pairing with Surface Tension would be Division, which leaves Growth as the one missing it's pair. Surface Tension and Division make sense to me, as one holds things together and the other separates them. In this scenario, Growth needs an opposite, and I could imagine it being something like Entropy, oh or maybe going in another direction something like Stasis.

Ha, I actually voted for Dalinar as an Order #10 Bondsmith at the top of this thread - the builder-like language just got me feeling a little less sure. Hopefully Dalinar will start showing some powers (maybe a spren? ohpleaseyesaspren) in WoR and help us out on this point.

The new WoR jacket flap text (link, with a nod to gruntle pointing it out) provides some nice hints that Dalinar is a Bondsmith and uses the world 'rebuild' that sounds soooo Order #8/Kalak.

Yeah...I have no idea what I'm even looking for past the first obvious one (can't even tell if the pages are filled w/ typos or if that's all intentional for some strange reason).

That does help, thanks! I'm a little confused about what you mean by, "This site has a scavenger hunt that may get you a code."

Holy crap, I've been unable to keep up with this stuff for a while now, only stumble back and hear about all the steelhunt and preview chapter stuff. Is anyone willing and able to help a guy navigate through this to read the preview chapters???

This is a really fascinating question, and a topic that came up in a long rambling post from earlier this year (old thread). A few other distinctive features that are mentioned in the WoK are Babatharnam: veins visible beneath the skin Natanatan: blue skin and white wooly hair Also, a few points from the older thread, and my own brain, that I might be worth reiterating here: 1 - What exactly does Shallan mean when she says that there are "eight kinds of blood"? It could be as simple as A/B/AB/O positive and negative, or it could refer to clear species distinctions (e.g. red human blood, orange parshendi blood, and six?! others). 2 - Distinct hair/skin/nail colorings are one thing, but the list of possible racial/regional features goes way beyond this in a few cases (namely the Siah Aimians polymorphing and casting shadows the wrong way!). It requires us to ask, which one of these is not like the other? One of these things just doesn't belong! 3 - From the information that we're given it doesn't appear as though the Heralds fall into any of the (very clearly distinguished) racial/ethnic groups on Roshar. So it appears as though whereever the Heralds originated from, it probably isn't the same place as the humans who populate Roshar.

The point still stands that it doesn't make sense for a given soulcaster (as in a person who can soulcast innately) to have strengths/weaknesses that are determined by their Knight Radiant Order. We know that only two Orders could soulcast, and soulcasting strengths/talents/whatever you want to call them being tied to Order precludes the existence of innate soulcasters who are skilled at soulcasting 8 or the 10 categories of stuff-which-can-be-soulcast (SWCBS - bam - it's an official acronym now). That seems ridiculous. Looking more broadly at the issue of heralds and orders being tied to specific gemstones, it's not clear what's going on. Kaladin, for example, doesn't seem to have any particular affinity or special use for sapphires, which are the gemstone tied to his apparent Order, nor does he do anything that makes direct use of translucent gas or air, which are the soulcasting properties sharing a column with Jez/Windrunners (other than the word "Wind" appearing in the order name, which is about the flimsiest connection ever). Kaladin has powers/abilities tied to pressure and gravitation, neither of which seem to have anything to do with sapphires or translucent gas/air.

Excellent quote, Zas - it was what I thought of when I perused threads today and saw this "honorspren is a generic term" idea propagating around. I think that theory falls completely apart when you examine all of the spren-related info (as you did in the original post). It seems clear that Surgebinders are a generic group, who gain powers through the Nahel bond; the Knights Radiant were a group of Surgebinders who built a structured organization around the ideals. It also seems as though the Knights Radiant may well have tapped into a way to gain additional abilities by way of the Nahel bond (e.g. Kaladin's Level Up when he speaks the 2nd Windrunner idea).

Oh! This last thought is excellent! Imagine that Jasnah and Shallan are of the two different Soulcasting orders (or at least have the same powers that function in the same way). If Jasnah were order 5, then her orders virtues would be Learned/Giving, and if Shallan is order 6 then her virtues would be Creative/Honest. Well, we already know that Shallan's art and telling truths are crucial to her Soulcasting and interacting with her spren. It would then stand to reason that Jasnah's soulcasting would be related (in admittedly what is likely some abstract way) to her own orders's virtues, which includes "Learned" (I'm setting aside "Giving" for now just to focus on one thing at a time). It would then follow that in order for Jasnah to soulcast, she must have a deep understanding on the thing(s) that she is trying to soulcast, and it is her education then which defines her strengths/weaknesses with respect to things that she can or cannot soulcast efficiently.

Actually there is a signing report on the board with the same name here at 17th shard (link-to-thread) that has information straight from Brandon about the order of the first five of the Stormlight Archive books (apparently it's actually two sets of 5-book arcs). The first five books have the following character foci: 1. Kaladin 2. Shallan 3. Szeth 4. Navanni 5. Dalinar

Agreed - I'd also point out that in a situation where you're fighting (potentially) armies of giant rock beasts and who knows what else, mobility is perhaps the most important thing to possess in terms gaining the tactical advantage necessary to stay alive. We've already seen via Szeth how the Windrunner abilities can be used to maneuver around a fight very effectively, and IF (this is hugely speculative) the Stonewardens' surge-based powers include something to the tune of super speed/strength (possibly seen in a mild form when Dalinar saves Elhokar by moving faster and more gracefully than a man in shardplate should be able to do) then that would also make a lot of sense as an ability that's useful for staying alive in battle.

I agree with dyring's view above. In a world with regular Desolations, and an obvious enemy in Odium to focus on, the Knights Radiant served a very clear purpose. But when you take away the Desolations and let a lot of time pass, then it seems intuitive that the Knights Radiant purpose would erode, and they'd be looking at a best-case scenario of becoming something like the Jedi circa the Old Republic. Oh, one other thought about the Recreance scene - which is actually a thought that Dalinar himself has while viewing that scene - is where are the other orders of Knights Radiant? Why do we only see the Windrunners and Stonewardens, but never the other orders? I could imagine that perhaps the Windrunners and Stonewardens are the orders that were tasked with the frontline fighting while the other orders specialized in other areas, but it's still strange that we never see a peep out of the other KR orders - just those two. Along this line of thought, it actually makes a lot of sense to me that only a subset of the KR orders would really specialize in combat, while others would have powers that focus them on other areas (healing, communication, etc.). There is certainly one order (Vev) with the attribute "healing", which could easily imply an order that is focused on curing people as opposed to running around on battlefields fighting, and there could be other logistical roles that were the focus of other orders that we don't know much about. Soulcasters, for example, aren't necessarily an obvious choice for front-lines fighters (Jasnah's badassery not withstanding).