Tortellini

I agree that him reviving the blade is heavily hinted at/being prepared. Furthermore, revival/healing works well with being an Edgedancer.

However, my personal wish for Adolin's ark is very different: He's the best fighter out there in the beginning. I want him to be the guy that everyone sort of assumes makes it to Radiant somehow, but he never does. He slowly turns from the badass to a liability being the only "old-fashioned" shardbearer in a growing pool of Radiants, and he grows through struggling with this loss of responsibility and meaning - he defines himself through his ability to help and fight, and that gets slowly taken away from him. Even his "weak" brother slowly overshadows him. He ends up finding peace with that and seeks new ways of contributing meaning, even while limited fighting-wise. That would be a great ark to follow. Optional path of "getting tempted to become a Voidbinder but turns away from evil in the end" possible, but I'd rather not go that cliché...

I guess it depends on how you look at it - it seems that "shard" is the term for a bonded spren taking physical form (bonded spren are otherwise not always visible to everyone, and also not generally solid matter). So a spren can probably become anything - and weapons (and maybe armor, although the nature of plate is still open I think) are just one subset.

I think all bonded spren can be weapons - but as said above not all may want to be weapons.

Hey,

so I had an idea about Taravangian's curse, and how it could fit his boon. It's been speculated before that his compassion is actually his boon, and that the compassion will end up saving the world.

Now, I've had the idea that T's fate will be a really, really ironic twist. Brandon loves those, and and this is setting up really well for one of those. So, T asked for a boon, which is the capacity to save humankind. My theory is that his curse is that he will in fact spend his time in ill-guided efforts that lead towards the destruction of humankind. Only at the end will he have a decidedly non-intelligent day (either very compassionate but quite stupid or maybe just very average, just like he was before), which in some combination of events leads to him being in a critical position that contributes to saving humankind. But his curse is that he will be in that position out of his own choosing and will. Quite possibly, he would have been in the same position even without going to the Nightwatcher at all. So he will indeed contribute to saving the world, but only accidentally and against his wishes at first, while at the same time all his efforts will prove to only have been contributing to death, destruction and suffering.

This would be the ultimate moral gut-punching "ends don't justify the means" realization for him to have, and quite possibly his contribution to saving the world involves some sort of redeeming sacrifice so he won't have to live with himself after.

So this is thinking about his boon/curse less in the juxtaposition of intelligence/compassion but rather in the sense of saviour/destroyer, his boon being he can save mankind and his curse being that he will do it by accident while being an evil destroyer otherwise. A second, less redeeming option might be that his boon is the capacity to save humankind, and his curse is the inability to realize it and take it (due to lacking compassion). Either way, the Nightwatcher basically tailor-made a bad guy for the series...

So, with the book out, it occurred to me that with what we've seen of Kaladin and Syl towards the end, Shardblades are waaaay more powerful than we even knew.

• They can change shape. We've seen Syl not just change from Sword to Spear, but also to a Shield - very useful for defense - and even a big hammer, strong enough to break bones. If you get creative, what else can you do? Can Syl change shape while in bladeform or does she have to disappear and reapper? Does that last part even matter? Because...
• She disappears and reforms instantaneously. Incredibly powerful - already we see Kaladin basically fighting with blade and shield by switching whenever needed. Your blade can appear anywhere! And not just that it...
• Appears with momentum! We have several moments where a blade is created mid-thrust or swing, and it is adapting to the movement of the hand. Shallan also does this with Tyn.

With all of these, what can't you do? A list of options I see:

• Block a swing from a shardbearer with your blade-shield, pushing back against the blade to move it away from yourself. Disappear shield, use forward momentum of your arm to form your blade and stab while the other sword is still pushed away, severing the spine.
• Swing at a shardbearer, disappear your sword mid-swing when he tries to block and reappear it afterwards to continue the swing, severing the spine.
• Form a Shard-Trident to catch an opposing shardbearer's blade, push back and re-form a blade to sever spine.
• Form your blade as a full encircling ring with a pole to hold on to, around the blade of your opponent. Do this in a good moment, then twist to rip the weapon out of opponent's hand. It will either fall to the ground, or more likely disappear into mist. Use 10 heartbeats to stop the heartbeat.
• Form shardblade as a long sickle behind opponent, and step backwards while pulling, severing the spine - from behind.
• Shardplate edition: Form your blade with the tip already lined up within the viewslit of the opponent's helmet and simply push, severing... the brain I guess?

We don't know if you can actually just have your sword appear within the spine already - which would make it even more crazily overpowered. At first, shardplate seems to help somewhat, but soon enough you find that it doesn't do anything either. Any Knight Radiant is a one-man god of death to any normal human, even with a "dead" shardblade and -plate. This is not sooo surprising, given that Szeth was that already with a blade that had the normal limitations. But the KR versions are incredibly more powerful still.

Which leads me to: What can be the enemy for them? Even stormform Parshendi are useless fodder against even a normal shardbearer... What can stop a Radiant knowing what is possible? Normally, their oaths should not allow them mass slaughter of random people I would think, but now that Nalan has gone a bit bonkers, what exactly can we expect from his Radiants?

So, will we see everyone becoming Knights Radiant? Or will everyone else simply become completely irrelevant combat-wise?

You mean you honestly think the grumpy swordsmaster, with a rope for a belt (normal ardents don't wear those), who Kaladin can't place the age of, who speaks in color metaphors constantly, who has lifesense in his interlude (he immediately knew when Kaladin was coming), and references a choice he needs to make every day to keep living... you think that guy isn't Vasher? And, you know, that he expected to hear a voice in his head, but of course hadn't heard one for years.

Go read his introduction (it's the chapter titled Swordsmaster) and his interlude again. Totally Vasher.

Yes, seeing everything explained it's very obvious - with this much detail it wouldn't be a fakeout any more I think. But I totally didn't see it, I thought it was one of the Heralds and felt clever about it!

I don't disagree on the stubborn - Kaladin was, and has always been, naive, idealistic, and very slow to change once burned. In that he's consistent. I don't mind that he takes a while to come around.

To me, the problem is rather that it feels that he "unlearned" something that he had already learned in TWoK. It took him a long time to come to the first, and second ideal, and a long time to trust Syl. But by the end of book 1, he had committed to the first 2 ideals, and had learned to trust Syl. Now, the whole "allowing Elhokar to get assassinated" violates all three of those things:

• "Journey before destination." Very clearly, this means that the ends do not justify the means, and it's addressed as such in book 1. If he had this in mind, there's no way he says yes to an assassination just to change politics (bear in mind that Elhokar is not actively evil, just incompetent)
• "I will protect those who cannot protect themselves." Definitely this includes someone being plotted against by shardbearers. Especially if, by neglecting his duty, he would leave that person without bodyguards. He's not just going against his ideal as a Windrunner, he's going against his ethics as a soldier, and abandoning his post.
• Syl repeatedly speaks against this, and he usually follows her instincts at the time of book 2, but not in this.

Now I know, Amaram, and Roshone, and they're evil and Elhokar's allowing it, but is that really enough to buy that Kaladin goes against all he learned in book 1, and against things that defined him even before? Remember, when we first meet Kaladin, he is introduced to us helping Cenn - a young and inexperienced, and thus incompetent man in a situation that is too challenging for him...

Finally, we’re told that one of the ten didn’t engage in the Recreance, but instead “said they would not abandon their arms and flee, but instead entertained great subterfuge at the expense of the other nine”.

I suspect that whichever order did this, went on to found the Stone Shamans.  It’d explain their knowledge, their trove of Honorblades and their ability to reclaim Szeth’s Honorblade if he died - Being the only people with Surgebinding and living Shards would give you one hell of an advantage in the aftermath of the Recreance. 

I strongly suspect that the remaining order is the Stonewards, and they turned into the Stone Shamans. First, they actually "ward" stones - they are holy to them, to the point of warding them even from being stepped on. This could be based on an ancient rule to be careful when stepping on stone, because a Thunderclast might appear beneath you. The strongest link however is that Taln is the Herald attached to the Stonewards, and he is the only Herald not to break his oath. We don't know exactly what caused the Recreance, but I always felt that there must be a causal link between the Recreance and the Heralds walking away from the Oathpact - the Heralds thus indirectly caused the Recreance. Then Taln's order may not have had the same reason to walk away when the other 9 did during the Recreance, since he was still doing his job getting tortured.

Haha, after getting the book last week already I was waiting for today to come, so that the lucky few of us can start talking

My reactions to you, and some general reactions:

You're not reading it carefully enough.

I think the "when we have this figured out" part is key. So all we have for now is something is flying. Kaladin lashing a rock to something above would be enough to have Lopen say this I think.

I agree with Aminar in that I don't really see a bloodbath coming. There's a chance that there'll be one really high-profile death (e.g. Sadeas wouldn't even count), but more would seem odd. Most characters seem like they have a lot left to do, and not many hold back another character in a way that they would be an effective obi-wan.

Dalinar is the exception. His death would move a lot of things forward, and opens the door for Adolin growing up, Kaladin being pushed in a very different position, Renarin to become more relevant somehow, and politics among the Alethi to go nuts. So he's got a pretty big target on his back. But I am not sure it will come now, or in book 3.

Even without soulcasting, a latrine trench could be dug to drain into the chasms. With the large number of highstorms that come every year this would not be a serious issue. Even during the weeping there would be enough rainfall to continuously deplete the build up of excrement [...]

2 things come to mind here:

1. The highstorms always come from the East and push everything through the trenches with their force.

2. The warcamps are on the western end of the trenches.

That is not the combination you want to empty your latrines into

Ah, exciting! I was the one that went to the signing in Manchester, and also started the original discussion (thanks to Kurkistan for digging those up!), so I can try to elaborate from memory a bit.

There were a combination of factors in Brandon's answer, including the weight of the stone, the problem of defending fixed structures too far away from the main camps (especially due to shardblades in the Parshendi army), and also Alethi culture.

I asked if the Alethi couldn't do things better, and he did clearly say that the way they think and work was in the end what kept them from innovating. He said if they really thought about it and put all their effort into it, they could do things a lot more efficiently, and end the war.

I now understand the answer quite well: First of all, it's not an innovating culture - especially the men, and they make the decisions in warfare. Second, there is actually very little interest in ending the war at the time of TWoK. Instead, most highprinces make huge financial gains on the Shattered Plains, and if the war ended, the king might just send the armies home and farm the Gemhearts himself. They don't want that, they are lured in by the quick buck.

Secondly, I got the feeling that the whole inefficiency is set up on purpose. It needs to be this way to have lots of room for innovation and new approaches. My feeling now is that we will see Dalinar, Kaladin and the others present a lot of solutions and new ideas in WoR, or maybe after depending on when the war is resolved. From a plot perspective, there is a broken system, so we can enjoy reading about how they will improve it. I am pretty convinced we'll see completely different approaches throughout the book - Dalinar is already starting in the preview chapters. That's not working out quite yet, but it's a start, and sets the stage for better innovation later.

I had an idea that's completely out of the left field, based on seeing a possible connection between Parshendi and Darkness:

Darkness might be a Parshendi.

PRO:

- he's black, with a white marking on the face. The colors can fit. We don't see enough of the rest to tell for certain.

- Parshendi change shape with different forms. If he's using a form unknown to others that is leading to him being more human-looking in shape, we can explain why he wouldn't be recognized as one.

- it could explain why the parshendi believe the same as him - he would have little trouble getting them to trust him - and also how they know so much about heralds...

CON:

- not much evidence so far

- no red on him, but that could be a part of his markings

- if he is, he must be keeping a lot of secrets from the Parshendi still. However, the other Heralds do so too...

- very random idea

This would mean the whole Parshmen as Voidbringers is a huge red herring, but some believe that anyways. That would mean that if the Nalan connection is true, there would actually have been a Parshendi herald. Quite interesting!

That would explain the fire problem, but it doesn't seem to fit with the scene where Jasnah soulcasts the boulder into smoke. It is explicitly stated there that the smoke explodes out because it is far less dense than stone, which only makes sense if we conserve mass. If you can explain that, then your theory will hold.

I think I can. The soulcast boulder could in no way preserve it's mass - let's do the math. Assuming the boulder is ~60g/mol (this is the value for silica, major component in most minerals), and is 30 Metric Tons total (volume of ~ 11 m³) , turning it into gas would yield a volume of 12 200 m³, more than 1000 times the volume of the stone. That is a medium-sized detonation, and definitely fatal for everyone in a closed space. So no conservation of mass there.

The question is what exactly is Smoke, from a material point of view? Now, if smoke really is heated gas, then the simple fact that the newly created smoky air is hotter than the surroundings would cause heavy steaming to spread the smoke instantly - sort of like opening a pressure cooker. That would look pretty much like what Shallan described.

Now, that was one of the nerdiest things I've ever done...

I believe the red line running through all the Cosmere stories is about people with powers that make them seem godlike to most other people. But none of them are Gods in the way Earth religion works - all shardholders are still mortal (several are dead, after all), and even Adonalsium, whatever he/she/it is, shattered. This goes back to Clarke's law that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic - the people of the Shardworlds see these incomprehensible powers and attribute them to godhood.

In fact, one of the more fascinating ideas behind the cosmere mystery is the notion that at some point, a small group of people, maybe even friends, were in the right place at the right time and got hit with splinters of Adonalsium. Maybe they still talk. They seem pretty humanlike in some of the few glimpses we've had. Maybe some of them meet for Poker once in a while...

What I believe Soulcasting is, (at least Shallan's) is to "convince" the spren of an object to vibrate just a little bit differently. So it isn't so much that the Flaming Man is actually turned into Fire. It's that Jasnah has convinced the spren to vibrate just a little faster (okay, a LOT faster) so that he burns. So yes, there should be ash (or at least Smoke).

I think this is definitely a step towards an explanation. However, physically this still doesn't make sense, due to the difference in density. 80kg of gas require much more volume than 80kg of liquids and solids, so there should still be an explosion due to expansion of gasses.

The real reason is much simpler and less grounded in physics, I believe: soulcasting does not follow the conversion of mass and engery. This actually reminded me of something Brandon said when I asked him about soulcasting bridges on the shattered plains into stone: He said it wouldn't be practical because the stone bridges would be heavier and collapse without additional reinforcement. It never clicked for me until now, but that very definitely means that when wood is soulcast to stone, the same piece of matter gains weight, braking the principle of conversation of mass. Jasnah's firecasting (and the lack of an explosion) shows the same: A person is soulcast into the same volume of hot gas, but not the same mass. And since there is no release of energy anywhere near what is required for E=mC², there is no conservation of energy.

There are 2 ways to make this still fit that come to my mind: one is that the interaction between the 3 realms plays a role somehow - i.e. mass or energy can shift between realms somehow. Energy seems likelier, that could be an option. The other, crazier one, is that C (the speed of light) is ridiculously low in the Cosmere. Maybe someone should ask Brandon about C in the Cosmere at a reading, I'm sure that would be an unexpected question for him

I had wondered about this also. I came to the conclusion that:

1. It would actually be quite possible to sell the shardblade for enough money on the "black market". Given their importance, almost any king would buy one no questions asked, and for enough to save Shallan's family.
   
2. Shallan is definitely not the type of person to do this. Even if her family already knew about the blade (which I think they don't), none of them have the criminal contacts, experience or potential to do that kind of deal. The chance to get yourself killed is much, much higher, and there's no room for errors. Also, for Shallan it may be a moral issue - a shardblade is an instrument of death, so giving it to someone makes you partially responsible for what he does with it. For her, direct theft is preferable to indirect murder.
   

One thing that supports the idea of Shallan and Jasnah being in different orders is that they are actually going to Shadesmar in different ways - remember that Shallan somehow actually disappeared and physically went to Shadesmar, which really surprised Jasnah. Jasnah did not cross physically to Shadesmar and does not even know that's possible.

If you think about it, Renarin is almost a perfect fit for one of the classic fantasy tropes for a later hero/saviour but also villain character. Let's look at the list:

• powerless, but surrounded by powerful people
  
• has some mysterious issue that is not understood but holds him back
  
• intelligent in a society that does not value intelligence much
  
• younger prince, overshadowed by the deeds of his elder brother
  
• gets (at the end) artifact that lets him overcome his weakness
  

All this points very, very strongly to Renarin being something. Question is, does it lead to glory or villainy?

Personally, I think glory is more likely, since Renarin just seems so nice. Brandon does like his foreshadowing, and I got no bad vibe from Renarin whatsoever.

Yeah, sorry to agree with the downers, but it's not really realistic to hope for Stormlight 2 this year. To put things in perspective, Brandon will very probably not start Stormlight 2 until MoL is finished. That should be in summer, since they are aiming for a fall release it seems. Then consider the obligations he has for book tours (the promotion and book tour for the final WoT book is likely to get huge, and The Rithmatist is also coming out this year I think), so if we're lucky, he will get to spend 3 months on SL2 this year. Add another 3 months for finishing it, a normal editing and publishing time, and we're likely to look at early fall 2013 already.

It's going to be a long wait my friends

Word. I am also surprised he revealed something as big as this.

I was stunned myself. However, it was indeed somewhat foreshadowed in the books as shown by Link above, and she did ask quite specifically about Taravangian and that his change in character seemed somewhat inconsistent. If you think about it, it may not be that plot-critical, it's just something we hadn't found out about him yet. Or it's as with Dalinar - his use of the old magic will probably be important someday, but it's been revealed long before. Maybe in Taravangian's case, the reveal was also planned to come before it would be critical - i.e. not as a stunning shocker that will be spoiled for us now. Maybe Brandon never expected so many of us to fall so easily for the simpler explanation of him being a good actor...

I'm glad I found this thread! I've been wondering about what would happen if a woman on Roshar was left-handed. I can definitely picture parents trying to force their daughters to become right handed since things like the the left hand being the safehand and only women being able to read seem so strict.

Left-handed people were forcibly retrained in Western culture 60 years ago, and still are in many parts of the world today. Seems reasonable to expect the same in Roshar.

So here's another question... What happens when a woman suffers a great injury to her right hand and can no longer use it very well (if at all) for everyday life? Do you think society would make an exception for her to use her left hand for everything or would it be frowned upon even though there is nothing that can be done? Or.. can the people on Roshar make some sort of fabrial prosthetic hand?!

Again, in our world you'd accept her using her left hand, but she'd be sort of a freak, which she'd be anyway due to the missing hand. No reason to expect any different. And I don't think there's widespread use of fabrials in Roshar, they seem limited to the upper class, and a "cybernetic" hand seems unlike what we've seen so far. Don't think that exists - yet. Who knows what they develop over time during the series...

Especially for his family if he gets into it similarly to RJ

That is an awesome find

I'll race you to her Eric *stalks*

Now now, let's all be reasonable here... I saw her first!

She was there with a guy people, so don't get your hopes up.

I believe Inkthinker has it pretty much right. They are treating it as a game, one they created a set of unspoken rules for that they follow to keep the game up. Anything that would threaten the game would threaten their income, which is much higher than if they weren't actually in the war.

The sense I got talking to Brandon was that for a single highprince, there would be a definite risk of significant losses involved in trying to establish an outpost. So if you think about it, it looks like this: either it works, and the other highprinces quickly adapt and follow suit, inching the camps closer to the center of the Plains. This will likely lead to more conflicts with the Parshendi but not really to more gemhearts. Or it doesn't work, and one highprince has significant, potentially disastrous losses and is in a weak position for quite some time. Not really an incentive there if you care about the gemhearts mostly. Better to not mess with the rules of the race and just play it as hard as you can.

On the question of ardents though - the king actually owns the ardents with the soulcasters (remember, they're property). Elhokar is the one actually charging for the use of the soulcasters, not the ardents themselves. So he is the one deciding how and when they are applied.

So you must be (of) the guys that asked me about my question about Axies the Creator:

I asked if Axies could regrow limbs, and he stated that he could do 'some interesting things', and that the two species of Aimian (whom Axies is of) each do different interesting things.

Ha! The axies thing! Completely forgotten that one... Yeah, that was me asking you! How cool is that...

Taravangian: Mind. Blown. Wow.

Yeah, tell me about it. That was something no one ever asked about before apparently. I was pretty stunned by it myself. The girl who asked the question will be my secret hero forever...