treblkickd

Dalinar's glowing (modern) Shardplate when he saves Elhokar would seem to argue very strongly against this kind of theory.

I haven't been able to keep up with thread over the past week or so, but now I'd like to bring it back a little bit to one of the original questions posed: Who are the Heralds and from where do they originate? My thinking is that they do not share an origin with the peoples of Roshar - they come from somewhere else. There isn't a lot of direct evidence for this, but it holds together very well with the conversation (both content and tone) between Kalak and Jezrien in the opening scene of the books, where the Heralds seems to think of themselves as quite separate from the people fighting under them. There's also the very telling description of Baxil's mistress (almost certainly Shallash/Shash), who is described as having a strange mix of features that don't match up with any of the normal Rosharian people (similar to the way in which the 17th Sharders hunting Hoid are described). Another interesting point related to this question has to do with the peoples of Roshar themselves. There seem to be multiple sub-races of humans on Roshar who Brandon goes out of his way to demonstrate as being physically quite different from one another. Examples include (but are not limited to): exotic eye color (purple, red, etc) something like nation-wide varicose veins (the people of Babatharnam) blue-tinted skin (the people of Natanatan) super long eyebrows that get tucked behind the ears (Thaylen merchant interlude) Axies the Collector's peoples' blue nails and crystaline blue eyes (not to mention casting a shadow the wrong way ?!?) So what's that all about? There are other less extreme tendencies for different peoples (e.g., eye shape, height), and taking all of the above together Roshar looks more and more like some kind of Cosmere refugee camp.

I don't think that the ties between Order-Herald-Gemstone-Essence-Divine_Attribute need to necessarily imply a 1-to-1 connection with Soulcasting talents, and frankly, we don't have any clear idea what determines "Soulcasting talents" or where they come. The detailed mechanics of Soulcasting are a complete unknown at this point, and therefore don't provide a useful basis for making arguments. If you think just about the information that is well-supported, such as the fact that adjacent Knights Radiant orders have surges in commong (one of which is Soulcasting), and the fact that which Orders are adjacent is pretty well undestood: 9......1 8...10....2 7...5...3 6......4 where applying this layout to the interior cover art is anchored by several "knowns", including the gemstone colors being matched to the Heralds/Orders/Essences/Attributes, and the Heralds' being depicted surrounding the glyphs (with Jezerien, the "King of Heralds" being the obvious one wearing a crown and coinciding with the #1 glyph, which is blue, thereby matching the sapphire gemstone). Oh, and there's also the comment in the WoK Ars Arcanum where it talks about this same "double eye" symbol as having the central pupils representing the creation of plants and creatures (plants being the essence tied to Order 5, and flesh/meat tied to Order 10). This is a little ramble-y but my point is that our understanding of how the orders match up to the double eye glyph diagram is really one of the most solid things that we know. Moving outward from there, there is also pretty good evidence that Shallan is Order 6. We really don't have any good direct evidence for what Order Jasnah might belong to, which means that Order 5 and Order 7 are the only reasonable guesses until we actually know something solid about her Order. One thing that is a puzzler re: the double eye diagram is that there are a number of lines that connect different Radiant Orders that are not adjacent, and which do not share a surge. Examples of this are the lines that run through the middle of the symbol (connecting, for example, 1 and 6, 9 and 4, 8 and 3, etc in the layout given above), and also the vertical lines that connect 1 and 4, and 9 and 6. In fact, it's odd that Orders 1, 4, 9 and 6 have these solid lines connecting them to four other Orders, while Orders 2,3,5,6,7,8, and 10 only have lines connecting them to three other Orders. What's going on there?

Well, the Parsh* as both Dawnsingers and Voidbringers is certainly out there, as far as ideas go! I'm not sure it really addresses the question of what the term "Dawnsingers" really means in this world; I think we would learn a lot of about what's going on in Roshar by understanding what (if any) interrelations exist between the Dawnsingers, the Dawnshards, and the Heralds. I can totally imagine a scenario where the Parshendi/Parshmen are the native race to Roshar, and humans are more of a refugee race. But the thing with Roshar in it's current state is that the highstorms are really the driving force behind the way that life is lived, and the highstorms are very very odd. Brandon tends to set his stories on worlds that are physically plausible in a physics+magic kind of way (i.e. preserve basic physics and add some magic), and in order for something like the highstorms to exist in that kind of setting you need some sort of persistent and powerful magical effect to drive the storms (especially considering that the storms carry stormlight with them, effectively recharging the batteries for magic-users). So looking at the big picture of how Roshar works meteorologically and ecologically, it just seems like you need some serious captial-S Shard type power to drive things.

Warning: This is a pretty long post, built on a foundation of rambling speculation. We are only about 10% of the way through the 10 book SA, so unknowns are going to naturally outweigh the knowns (especially after accounting for Brandon's tendency to backload the revelatory information). With this in mind, there are a few big questions that are rattling around in my brain: Q1: How did Roshar become the way that it is? I'm thinking specifically here about it's very peculiar flora/fauna situation (plants/animals adapted to highstorms), which is emphasized by the presence of Shinovar and it's Earth-like qualities. It seems unlikely that the highstorm-specific life on Roshar is the result of natural Darwinian processes of evolution, because that would require many millions of years to take place, and there is no indication of such a timescale lapse between the shattering of Adonalsium and the books that we're reading. We've also seen (in Mistborn) a blatant example of shard-based powers creating a world with an ecology that is deliberately altered relative to what you find on Earth, and so it's easy to imagine a similar invocation of power to sculpt life of Roshar so that it can survive the highstorms. If one assumes that life on Roshar was sculpted to deal with the highstorms, then this raises the question of where the highstorms came from. They are almost certainly tied to much of the magic on Roshar (specifically via stormlight, which powers surgebinding), and there are numerous clues that suggest that highstorms are at least partially related to Honor (e.g., stormlight powers the surgebinding used by the Knights Radiant, the king of Heralds of the Almighty is called "Stormfather"), though it's hard to say anything beyond stating that there is some sort of connection there. Somewhat along the same line of thought, there seems to be significant physical variation between the different kinds of humans (or human-like beings) that live on Roshar. We see everything from exotic eye color (purple, red, etc) to something that sounds like nation-wide varicose veins (the people of Babatharnam), blue-tinted skin (the people of Natanatan), super long eyebrows that get tucked behind the ears (Thaylen merchant interlude), and of course Axies the Collector's peoples' blue nails and crystaline blue eyes (not to mention casting a shadow the wrong way ?!?) - just to name a few. So where did these distinctly different peoples come from? If one were prone to wild speculation, one might suggest that different peoples can be traced back to the 10 Silver Kingdoms, but we know so little about the Silver Kingdoms that such speculation isn't especially useful. Ah, and one other thought re: different kinds of people on Roshar: Jasnah mentions, in Ch 72 while talking to Shallan about soulcasting, that there are "eight kinds of blood". The opening Kalak PoV mentions red, orange, and violet blood (human, parshendi/parshman, and greatshell? I know that parsh* and chasmfiend innards are specifically described in WoK, but don't have the means to find specific references now), but then again Jasnah could just be talking about something as mundane as the eight different types of human blood (i.e. A,B,AB,O - all positive or negative). Q2: Who are the Heralds, and where did they come from? Could the Heralds have origins from the time/place when/where Adonalsium was shattered? Certainly the Heralds are very peculiar individuals, with a lot of power (there's a Brandon quote to this effect, I believe?) and a much deeper understanding of what's going on on Roshar than the people who are clearly natives (this much is clear from Kalak's PoV in the start). They know something about what the Oathpact is, at least enough to hypothesize about the implications of their actions. There's other potentially corroborative evidence in something that Hoid says to Kaladin in Ch 57 (the same one where he gives Kaladin his flute), "I've come to your land to chase an old acquaintance, but I end up spending most of my time hiding from him instead." What acquaintance could Hoid be talking about? It could be the addressee of the Letter (epigraphs for Ch 12-28), except that the letter specifically addresses "my old friend", and friend != acquaintance (this would be very sloppy use of language if they are the same individual). I think there's at least an even chance that this "acquaintance" is one of the Heralds. Hoid also refers to Talenel as "my confused, unfortunate friend" at the very end of WoK, which could suggest that Hoid is personally acquainted with the Heralds. Now, there are plenty of ways that Hoid - as a planet hopper - could know the Heralds personally without the Heralds themselves dating back to the shattering of Adonalsium. That said, the Heralds are clearly one of the oldest and most Comsere-knowledgable groups of people on Roshar (likely on any Cosmere planet, actually). Tying this question to Q1 above and turning speculation up to 11, one could suggest that the 10 Heralds were the leaders of 10 peoples who fled from various places/other planets, and settled together on Roshar to make a stand against Odium/the Voidbringers. Q3: Can we say anything useful about the mysterious figures described in the "Heraldic Epochs" of Roshar? Beyond just the Heralds, the mysterious figures I'm referring to here includes the "Dawnsingers", and sort-of-maybe also the Voidbringers. When Shallan is talking to Kabsal in Ch 45 about the Voidbringers, she also asks about the Dawnsingers. Kabsal describes them as "healers, kindly spren sent by the Almighty to care for humans one we were forces out of the Tranquiline Halls". Shallan reinterprets this is "Kind of the opposite of the Voidbringers", to which Kabsal replies, "I suppose you could say that." Now, we know that Kabsal is some kind of assassin/agent for one of the secret groups that is operating in opposition to Jasnah (and presumably the Veristitalians?) - possibly the Ghostbloods (well, probably the Ghostbloods, given that SA is a closed story with finite narrative space). As a Ghostblood (or similar), it would make sense for Kabsal to have access to knowledge about the ancient lore of Roshar that is at leasted based in truth, and is therefore a useful source of nuggets of information that truthfully reflect the very old history of Roshar. Now, Kabsal could just be talking out of his chull or lying to Shallan, but considering that he seems to genuinely like Shallan and never seems to consider her much of a threat, it's also entirely possible that he's being forthright - if circumspect - with what he says here. One other really good piece of information that we get about the Voidbringers comes from one of Dalinar's flashbacks, Ch 19, when he fights the "Midnight Essence" and fights alongside a Windrunner and a Stonewarden. He asks those two KR specifically if what they fought were Voidbringers, and the response from the KR is, "The knight sniffed dismissively, 'Voidbringers? These? No, this was Midnight Essence, though who released it is still a mystery'". The dismissive sniff is indication that whatever Voidbringers are, they are pretty bad dudes (Dalinar thinks of the Midnight Essence as pretty tough, i.e. not a pushover to fight). So brining this back to the Dawnsingers and Voidbringers - what could those be? Possibly the Dawnsingers are the Heralds? Or possibly they are the honor-spren (and similar) that grant surgebinding powers? If this second guess were true, then maybe Voidbringers are the equivalent spren or spren-like things that grant Voidbinding powers? I'm at a loss for more speculation at this point, but I do feel that anything that we can reconstruct about Roshar's past provides a valuable framework for understanding what's happening in the Stormlight Archive books.

hahahaha - wow now I will only ever be able to visualize this image when imagining Dalinar.

I agree completely that shardplates are not fabrials, and should not be thought of in the same way. References in WoK that compare fabrials to shardplates and shardblades make it clear that fabrials really aren't in the same stratosphere. This idea just doesn't make any sense in the context of everything we are shown in WoK. Shardplate glows when Knights Radiant wear it in multiple of Dalinar's visions, including visions where those KR aren't fighting anything evil (e.g. when the KR give up their plate and blades). Intent is, as far as the fandom understands it, one of the crucial pieces involved in magic in the Cosmere. On Roshar, we know that binding to an honorspren grants access to surgebinding (because Kaladin does just this). If Dalinar is also in the process of attracting an honorspren (or some other kind of spren - it doesn't have to be honorspren as we know from Nohadon) then it follows that he would gain access to surgebinding from that bond. Just stepping back and looking at what happens with Dalinar in WoK, I think the evidence favors Dalinar being on the path toward surgebinding/Radiant abilities. So sure, binding with a(n) (honor)spren seems to grant access to surgebinding/KR powers, and those powers almost certainly include better use of/attunement to shardplate (just as you describe above). Carrying this over to the analogy used re: a professional driver with a car, it is something about the driver that makes the car perform better, just as it is something about Dalinar that makes the plate perform better. It is Knights Radiant (and only Knights Radiant) who we witness in WoK with the high-performance plate, and it is therefore sensible to conclude that if Dalinar is getting high performance results from the plate, then he is at the top of the list of candidates to become a Knight Radiant. editted for spelling

Because we've seen quite a few fabrials in WoK and none of them are used by acting in accord with something as abstract as a shard's intent. They are all activated or used via simple mechanical means. Explaining Dalinar's glowing shardplate as some kind of new pseudo-fabrial mechanism is contrived in much the same way that it would be contrived to say that maybe Dalinar's plate is glowing because Hoid is making it so; there is no statement in the text that flatly contradicts either idea but at the same time neither idea fits into the SA magic as it has been presented. Re: Vortaan's post - I agree that there's no good reason to assume that every important character in the SA will be a Knight Radiant, but Dalinar being one isn't the same as saying that all of the important characters are. As far as a summary of what's going on with Dalinar, I would also add a few comments to Lamguin's post, and restate some of it slightly differently. Specifically: 1) Dalinar's shardplate glows when he is fighting to save Elhokar. Glowing shardplate only otherwise occurs when full Knights Radiant are using shardplate. 2) Dalinar while moving to save Elhokar exhibits "speed and grace no man - not even one wearing shardplate - should be able to manage." [this quote from Adolin's PoV in chapter 13, pg 209 in the US hardcover]. Dalinar is clearly doing something extraordinary here, and if we trust that Adolin is an expert re: shardplate, it isn't the shardplate that's enabling Dalinar to do it. 3) There is no strong evidence for or against use of stormlight by Dalinar. 4) Dalinar has not obviously interacted with a spren. That said, it is worth looking at what goes on inside Dalinar's head in chapter 26 (pg 381 in the US hardcover) when he begins to lose the Thrill while fighting the parshendi. He hears a voice that he cannot explain that whispers regarding shardplate and blades, "Once these weapons meant protecting", and then "Life before death." It's not clear what the voice is, but a spren has to be on the list of possibilities. Re: point #3 above, it's worth noting that Dalinar's plate is damaged in the same fight where it glows and Dalinar performs physical feats that seem beyond what is normal for shardplate (in Adolin's opinion). It is therefore entirely possible that some part of what Darlinar does uses up a small amount of stormlight, but the leaking of stormlight due to the damage washes out his or anyone else's ability to perceive that a small amount of stormlight was drawm from the gems in the shardplate.

I'm just saying that this idea doesn't make sense within the framework of Brandon's magic systems.

I don't quite follow this line of thought. Dalinar having the powers of one of the KR orders doesn't preclude him from taking a leadership/guiding role, and isn't gaining abilities from acting in accord with Honor's intent pretty much the definition of surgebinding/KR abilities? It's also not Brandon's MO to have random add-on powers and abilities beyond his well-ordered magic systems.

To add one more observation to this line of thought: from chapter 15, pg 222 in the US hardcover, where Adolin is thinking about Dalinar's crazy feats while saving Elhokar from the chasmfiend, it is explicitly said about Dalinar at that moment, "This wasn't the first time Adolin had seen such extraordinary actions from his father, but they had seemed particularly dramatic. Standing beneath the massive chasmfiend, holding back from killing his nephew, Plate glowing. That image was fixed in Adolin's memory." (emphasis mine) So, we have Dalinar performing feats that are extraordinary even beyond the kind of things that built his reputation, and his plate is clearly described as glowing - he seems to be showing off some Radiant-like ability. It'd be jumping the gun to guess now, but I'm really curious to find our what order/powers Dalinar ends up having.

Brandon has also said that there's a possibility of Kaladin getting a second PoV book later in the series, which implies that there is at least a lot of potential material there that can be both interesting, and relevant to the story arc.

It sounds to me like you've summarized things correctly here. I would also add that the use of this term, "Regrowth", is reminiscent of the way that Windrunners (via Szeth's PoV) refer to "Lashings", and in that way it also sounds like another kind of surge-based power that might naturally be associated with one of the Knights Radiant orders.

I really hope that huge spren that Axies watches appear out of the water is one. Axies himself (or at the least, his natural body-morphing abilities) can probably be added to the list as well.

Oh snap, that's a nice catch! If anyone has a book handy, isn't the "seeming to glow" the same kind of language (or at least very, very similar) to what is used to describe Kaladin during his first stink with the army in the first few chapters of the book (before he is a slave)?

Arguing over which virtues match Jasnah seems like a pointless exercise for now, which I think is made pretty clear by how easily people can toss out examples and counterexamples of Jansah maybe or maybe not behaving in line with being Just, Confident, Brave, Wise, Careful, etc. Looking at Shallan as a guiding case, I think we can feel pretty good about matching her to Order 6 b/c we get a lot of her PoV, and we know that both her creativity (art) and honesty are *directly* related to her interacting with spren and soulcasting. Do we have any examples of what kind of (potentially, or arguably) virtuous behaviors are *directly* related to Jasnah's soulcasting and/or interaction with spren? I don't think that we do, and more generally I think that seeing those kinds of examples requires PoV or an equivalently "all-access" look into Jasnah while she's soulcasting or chatting with her spren or what have you. edit: spelling is clearly not my virtue

This particular set of events is suspicious because it is, at the very least, strongly implied that Dalinar *is* doing something unusual when he saves Elhokar. He shows off speed and strength that is commented as being unusual even for someone wearing shardplate, and I think that he gives off a little bit of a glow as well (?).

Right, so Kaladin is using both of the powers that are accessible to him as a Windrunner. Also Szeth is using those same powers, and no additional radiant-related powers that we've seen, regardless of where they come from. Does anyone think that we might also have seen multiple powers used by Jasnah? Certainly she can soulcast (which is based on transformation, yes?), but could the lightening bolt trick be the result of her second power or does she explicitly say that she is soulcasting when she did that?

Right, I had just thought that there was some other thought in there, post-battle, where Dalinar thinks to himself that the gems seemed to have lost more light than he would normally expect given the damage level (but again, I might just be misremembering this).

So on this topic, how much do we really know about the definitions or boundaries between one "power" and another (where power here refers to the small symbols on the interior cover art, two of which are linked to each Radiant order)? There's also ambiguity about how exactly to use other related terminology. For example, everyone seems comfortable saying that Kaladin is a member of order #1 (Jez), and is a Windrunner. Szeth also refers to himself as a Windrunner (or at least as having the same powers, maybe?), which would all seem to imply that Windrunner = user of the two powers linked to the first Radiant Order. But we don't have any terms to describe those two individual powers, right? Surgebinding seems to be a catchall term to describe using one (or more?) of those powers, but are there are terms that describe the specific powers that Kaladin, for example, uses in WoK? Anyway, I have two thoughts in mind that are related to the questions above. One is just to quickly say that if Jasnah is, in fact, of Radiant Order #2, or has the same powers, as that order, then she should share a power with Kaladin (assuming that the diagram is laid out in the way that was proposed above, which makes sense given the orders' links to gems, and the colors of the symbols in the interior art). So what in the world is this power that Jasnah might share with Kaladin? Presumably we've only seen Jasnah use one power, but what about Kaladin: have we seen him use just one power, or two? I'm a year removed from my last WoK read, but I thought I remembered something in the description (from Szeth's PoV) about Szeth's Lashings (ugh, another term that needs to be fit in and used appropriately) not all originating from the same fundamental thing (i.e. the range of Lashings used by Windrunners could encompass both "powers" that Windrunners have access to). Am I remembering things corrrectly? If so, does this imply that we've already seen Szeth and Kaladin use both of the powers that are associated with the first (Jez) Radiant order?

It's been a full year since I last read through WoK, but I thought I remembered a line about Dalinar's shardplate gems being low after he saves Elhokar from the chasmfiend while pulling off the extra feats of strength and glowing and whatnot. Am I just thinking of the line about Elhokar's gem's being low and mis-attributing it to Dalinar?

All of the prizes sound great - I want to win!