kari-no-sugata

I had this odd thought the other day - Shallan would probably make for a poor antagonist. I just couldn't picture her as one (initially). But my purpose here isn't to say she couldn't be one, but to write an alternative and vaguely plausible history for her to turn her into one... for fun. Just to see what I can come up with. If you like this, please try to come up with your own ideas - bonus points for doing it to your favourite protagonist. The branching point is when Shallan is 15. Her father finds out she's been drawing pictures of things he doesn't approve of and tosses her sketchbook into the fire. Her sketchbook. Her life's work. All gone. Her old memories are fully unlocked and she re-summons Pattern and uses Soulcasting to turn things into fire - the whole house. Everyone dies except Shallan. This time she can't forget. She doesn't want to. But, she has no resources except her brain and her Surgebinding. She doesn't want to die - though she's not particularly attached to life either. She becomes a wandering thief. Sometimes when she has a good amount of money she will sketch and research natural history for a week or two. It doesn't bring her the joy it once did. She catches the eye of a professional thief called Tyn, who spots her potential. Shallan is grateful for the ability to learn properly and progresses at an incredible rate, subtly augmented with some sneaky Surgebinding. Half a year later, Tyn is feeling proud of her apprentice but also nervous - she's running out of things to teach Shallan, who is becoming increasingly confident and self-assured. Shallan never spots this but Tyn feels threatened. Tyn decides to take upon a high-risk mission to assassinate Jasnah Kholin, sending Shallan on what she hopes to be a suicide mission. However, it's Tyn who dies instead - and Shallan blames Jasnah. While Shallan respected Tyn, she was not especially loyal. For fun, she decides to lightly harass Jasnah instead. Nothing minor, or so she thought - writing graffiti on books Jasnah was planning to read, going through Jasnah's notes and using her Soulcasting to subtly (or sometimes blatantly) edit the words. Shallan is having fun... until one day she happens to hear Jasnah muttering in a dead tone all the things she plans to do when she captures the miscreant. Shallan leaves the area in a rush and spends a year or two wandering around. Sometimes she feels in the mood to create works of art - she makes a small name for herself as a young, eccentric but gifted artist. One of her creations, a bowl of highly realistic but completely fake fruit ends up all the way in Azir and happens to end up in the hands of Lift, who is frustrated that she can't eat them. Shallan does turn to theft when she doesn't feel in the mood for art. One day, Shallan happens across a slave auction, and feeling a bit flush with cash and in a whimsical mood decides to buy an interesting looking slave. At first, she acts like a proper lighteyed lady around him - makes him carry her when she's "too tired", lightly teases him, giggling at his reactions but isn't actively mean. A few days later he runs away. Incensed, Shallan tracks him down (with some help from Pattern) and now the gloves are off. With her summoned Shadeblade, Shallan makes it crystal clear just what he might lose if he ever disobeys her. Now, Shallan teases and plays pranks on him constantly - and also forces him to come help her with thefts. After a couple of occasions being chased by guards, his face ends up on wanted posters. This doesn't stop Shallan from using him though as she just weaves a disguise on him. One day, Shallan decides to rent him out as a model for some lighteyed women to sketch - a nude model. Shortly after that, Kaladin uses his medical knowledge to fake his own death to escape Shallan. He runs away to Alethkar, where he founds an underground resistance movement against lighteyed rule, taking over the capital when the queen starts a riot. Shallan makes her way to the Shattered Plains - she decided she wants to sketch a chasamfiend. She spends a few months there before she gets a chance and during that time she finds an easy target in Adolin - after he dumps her the first time, she creates a new persona with a new look and dates him all over again. And again. She does this 10 times in a row without him ever catching on and decides to turn the tables by revealing what she did and dumping him. His pride and "reputation" in ruins, Adolin becomes an ardent and vows never to speak with women again. Shallan finally gets to go on a hunt for a chasamfiend, among the king's party. Unfortunately for her, she's right where it appears after the baiting goes wrong. Her last words are "what a magnificent beast..." -- The end -- Thanks for reading. Hope it was some lighthearted fun - I'm not really into grimdark alternatives or making protagonists go all evil.

I have this idea that perhaps spren have some kind of "group" memory. Consider the following two quotes. I seem to remember Syl saying somewhere that all spren are one... but can't find the quote. So anyway - Pattern was around at the time of the Knights Radiant but had a very weak existence it seems. In a sense, all spren alive today were alive then... for a given value of alive. I thought it was interesting that Pattern could sift truth from lies in the book. Do Cryptics keep detailed histories, enough that Pattern could have learned from them enough to critique the book...? Or instead, maybe they have some kind of group memory instead? Normally, the first option would be considered the only possible solution but given how odd spren are, it's difficult to know what's really possible. It's also possible that Pattern could observe and remember events from the time of the Radiants but this seems unlikely from how he describes himself then.

Until this thread I hadn't wondered why Shallan told Kaladin all that she did during the highstorm. As I've said previously in this thread I don't think she had any particular "need" to do it. We don't see her reflect on it later. My reading of the scene is that she mostly wanted a distraction from the terror of the storm - if she really thought she was going to die she would try to do something about it. Of course, that doesn't explain why Shallan chose to tell Kaladin that she killed her own father. I would guess that it was a combination of factors rather than any one big factor. I suspect if we could ask Shallan she might not give a big long explanation and could just simply say "it felt right". Regarding the discussion on Kaladin's thought that Shallan is "stronger" than him, this was something I started wondering about some weeks ago. It's very hard to quantify such a thing. It's also highly dependant on the situation. Kaladin's reaction seems to be more like "I could never have handled her situation without breaking". He doesn't seem to consider if the reverse would be true - if we imagine a male version of Shallan, would such a person have been able to handle Kaladin's situation without breaking? My guess would be "yes" but I don't think she would necessarily have handled it better. There's also many different kinds of strength - the mental resilience to be able to handle a terrible situation without breaking is just one kind. Due to their focus on the inner self, I could imagine that Lightweavers would be mentally stronger than most Radiants but that's just an average and it certainly doesn't mean that Shallan is automatically the strongest mentally. My feeling is that Szeth is the strongest mentally, at least of the characters we've seen viewpoints of. But this is not to say that Szeth or Shallan have true mental strength yet - Dalinar seems closest to that. Shallan has a very clear fault-line (as it were) running through WoR - that simply being reminded of her mother's death can cause her to completely freeze. This was happening several times a day (it seems) shortly after the event and there's one definite case of it happening outside the flashbacks (maybe more). It's never spelled out explicitly but it's clear that she learned to cope with it by avoiding it as much as possible - focus on the future not the past, focus on what she can do, etc. She doesn't actually erase the memory though - she's aware of what she did in a hazy way - which is why it can still freeze her. Shallan certainly has an interesting collection of coping mechanisms: distracting herself, using humour, forcing herself to keep a positive mindset and hope for the future, finding things to enjoy, avoiding things that trouble her (particularly regarding her mother), trying to help her family and allowing herself to be insane. She also seems to get some solace from religion - makes me wonder how she will react to finding that The Almighty is dead. She did all this with practically no help or support so it's hardly surprising she's messed up still. She did get a bit of help from Helaran for a while and once from Wit/Hoid (she remembers him well because she got some real help, if only briefly). Allow my to expand on my "allowing herself to be insane" line. This is really based on this scene from chapter 60 that starts with this (I'm not going to quote the whole thing): She's clearly thought about this. I doubt she planned it to turn out that way but this combined with some other comments makes me think she'd rather be "insane but useful" than "sane but useless" - Pattern asks her if she's "mad" (ie insane) at one point and she says yes. She jokingly refers to herself as insane to Kaladin but it's also based on how she sees herself, I think. It might be better to say that she's "relaxed about whether she is sane or not" rather than that truly considers herself to be insane (it's not like she wants to be insane). I think this scene is about her real fear with Pattern forcing her to remember her mother - it's not the knowledge itself but the fear that she will be crippled by the memories, like they did in the past. A quite reasonable fear. It could also be argued that Pattern is quite brave (or foolhardy) to take the risk - he had a lot to lose by getting it wrong. It's not entirely clear but it seems that Shallan could cope with the memories well enough (we only see her briefly from Dalinar's point of view afterwards). So, one coping mechanism down, several to go? Actually, I suspect she'll keep some - particularly her sense of humour - and others will shift a in a healthier direction.

Just to be clear: I'm expecting there to be some kind of attack on/in Urithru at some point. Never said anything about them actually winning

It's all Parshmen will turn into Voidbringers: The Stormfather uses the term "the old people". I don't think we know for sure if this is only the Parshmen (and any remaining Parshendi) or there's other types too. We know there's other types of Voidbringers but we don't know if they're similar.

You're right, that fact had temporarily slipped my mind. Thanks. However, the number of Radiants in the world is increasing and it is possible to trick or force them (with hostages). One real danger is that the Ghostbloods will try to do something - they're already inside Urithru and if they get enough people inside they could launch an internal assault. They could try to blackmail Shallan, use her brothers as hostages or simply use Dalinar's benevolence against him. Wouldn't surprise me if the climax sequence for SA#3 starts with the Ghostbloods coming into the open and launching a takeover bid. Here's an interesting thought - could an Honorblade wielded by anyone be used to activate the portals? If so, then Radiants would not be needed. It seems likely that the Radiants would have designed the system to be usable by Heralds if they could have and the designers may not have foreseen a possibility of a non-Herald wielding an Honorblade. And it just so happens that Kaladin has picked up an Honorblade that will be stored in Urithru. How... convenient Feeding an army is a very different prospect to feeding a whole country. Stormlight can be stored in gems for later use but there's only so many gems and they wear out with use. There's also only so many soulcaster devices too, even if you use them continuously - feels like the warcamps were close to the practical limits. To make it possible to feed a whole country long term you'd need Shallan's hypothetical plan to mass-produce chasamfiends and also need to make new food soulcasters (or lots of Radiants with Transformation Surge).

Going back to the original question: the most common reason I see cited against Kaladin + Shallan is that they're the main male/female characters (currently). Now, I would complain about this argument being shallow... but what it's really saying is "we don't want the predictable, boring and all-too-common choice yet again, thank you very much", which I can certainly agree with. I don't think the fact that Kaladin killed Shallan's brother will be a "deal breaker" by itself. Shallan has kinda half-forgiven Amaran, though there's certainly some anger/resentment left. If this does become a problem I think it would be most likely because either Kaladin feels guilty about it and makes some bad choices because of it and/or Shallan is angry with Kaladin for obviously knowing about it but not telling her. It may come to light (to Shallan) with the worst possible timing but I think this would be a short lived issue between them. So, what about their spren? Rather frustratingly we never get to see Pattern and Syl meet. Could their spren make a relationship impossible? We just don't have enough info here but I do have an interesting observation - Shallan and Syl have fairly similar personalities (though with significant differences too). They both contrast very strongly with Kaladin and they do so in quite similar ways. Pattern contrasts with Shallan too but in a very different way to Kaladin and not nearly so strongly. I've seen a few posters hoping that Shallan and Kaladin could end up friends - I can quite easily see Shallan and Syl having a sister like relationship. I think if Shallan and Kaladin were marooned alone on an island I could see them having a strong long term relationship. However, what they're facing is rather the opposite - they're going to be deluged by events. Difficult events. Painful events. Even if it doesn't directly involve them or people they know they've effectively taken up the task to try to save the world. They're going to have to make many decisions with no obviously correct answer. They might share very similar goals but their approach may just be too dissimilar and they would have strong opinions as well. I don't know for certain that this will be the case but their personalities and outlook on life are very different. I suspect the same thing would prevent them from being close friends too. I certainly don't think any possible romantic relationship between them is doomed. If future books do explore this possibility seriously then I think they would make a very interesting couple - I highly enjoyed nearly all the scenes they had together so far (though I don't quite like the "boots" scene - felt a bit forced/unnecessary). I'm not against them being a couple but I think it quite a long shot as things stand.

I wanted to keep the topic on the actual storm but it's going to be interesting to see how everyone deals with it. I think there may end up being a lot of resentment about the people sitting pretty in Urithru. Dalinar's main concern right now is to try to organise the world together to face the Everstorm and it's magical side-effects but if nobody tries to invade / take-over Urithru I'll be quite surprised - imagine the counties in the west being devastated by the Everstorm finding out there's a magic portal to safety. While some would be grateful some would want to take it over and shut down the portals and just "wait out" the Everstorm (I wonder even how practical an option that is?).

I've not seen much discussion of this - here's my thoughts. For the last 4500 years or so, the highstorms have been doing the same thing: going from east to west once or twice a week, weakening as they do so. Though they are extremely powerful, because they come from a predictable direction the amount of actual damage they cause is not so bad - people and nature have been able to deal with them reasonably well. Those on the east of Roshar are the most affected as the winds are strongest there. There's a fairly smooth gradient across the continent and entire ecosystems have developed around this. But now the Everstorm comes, blowing the "wrong" way. It's not just buildings though. In the east, crops can only be grown in windbreaks and laits (I think so at least though I've not been able to find a direct reference). I don't know about the west - I guess in the far west the highstorm winds are probably weak enough that windbreaks only make a minor difference. This means that those who had been most sheltered and least setup to deal with highstorms will be the most exposed to the Everstorm. Towns in the west that are in laits rather than proper valleys could be destroyed (ironically, those domed buildings that Lift made fun of could come in handy). Even if the people survive their crops could be ruined. Sheltered cities might not be directly affected much but could face famine due to widespread crop failure. I would imagine that the Everstorm will similarly weaken as it goes from west to east. I'm not sure how strong it will be by the time it gets to Alethkar - maybe not much worse than a regular storm. It would be interesting to know how "wide" it is compared to a highstorm - will each Everstorm passing through affect the whole of Roshar or just a swathe? In the west, I wouldn't be surprised if some areas see their population fall by 90% or more - due to direct effects of the wind/rain, in the medium term from starvation due to crop failure and in the longer term due to the survivors migrating to safer regions. The Everstorm is going to be very destructive even if we ignore the magical effects. YOU ARE DOOMED

Eh, what consequences? I don't see anything forcing her to go into the detail she did.

I don't blame Kaladin for being angry. He is right to seek justice. That doesn't give him the right to do whatever he likes in retaliation (a very common trap humans fall into). We also both recognise that he changes significantly by the end of the book though - effectively that he himself disagrees with his past actions and attitude. He is right that the system is unjust. That does not make his methods (or attitude) right. He should be setting a better example not applying reverse prejudice. It's made abundantly clear that his prejudices are distorting his perception of people and events. Fortunately, it is also made abundantly clear that by the end of the book he has managed to free himself of those prejudices and see lighteyes as fellow human beings. Regarding Dalinar, I'm not sure I agree but this is more because I don't remember him specifically considering ways in which to reform the lighteye/darkeye system - ie what he did with Kaladin feels more like a once-off special case rather than the first step towards reform... though it may very well turn out to be one retrospectively. It's more of a semantic quibble I'm not quite sure exactly what you have in mind but I certainly do hope to see some discussion and hopefully actual reform of Vorin culture, starting with the abolition of slavery. I'm hoping this will be one of the themes of the next book - if the Urithru group start having extended contact with non-Vorin cultures that should help. It will be also be interesting to see how Kaladin deals with his lighteyed status. btw I suspect that Jasnah might have already questioned this aspect of Vorin culture. It will be interesting to see who gets the ball rolling...

I spotted lots of subtle things on re-reading WoR though much of that was foreshadowing events later in the book. In terms of hidden things that aren't explained later, some more "hidden" than others, here's a couple of things that spring to mind: Galivar - for a dead dude he becomes more mysterious by the day Renarin - what's been happening to him and what can he do Dalinar - what can Bondsmiths really do and why are they so rare? Shallan - what happened to her before her mother died? How did she first meet Pattern and what did she do? Shallan #2 - can her Surges directly affect people's minds? Shallan #3 - can she see remote events in past/current/future? (such as when she drew Yalb and Shalash) Shallan #4 - was her taking of the slaves a hint to future events involving slavery? Jasnah has also said that Alethi society is too stratified Shallan's mother and her "friend" Dreder - why did they try to kill Shallan? Helaran - what was he trying to do and why? Nalan/Nin - what does he really want and how sane is he? Taln! Taln? Taln!? Teft - he seems to have some kind of long-term gambling addiction or money problem Wit/Hoid's flute - what happened to it and is it important? Ghostbloods - where in the Cosmere are they from and what are they after? Horneaters - why were they (supposedly) so feared in the past and what's going on with their mountaintops? the "old people" the Stormfather talks about - they will be transformed by the Everstorm, but are they just Parshman/Parshendi or are there others? Radiant squires - how does it work and what can they do? The Recreance is still a big mystery. spren cousins - Syl refers to windspren as her cousins. Did honorspren diverge (evolve, branch, split, whatever) from windspren? Are Cryptics similarly "cousins" to creationspren? spren memory - do they have some kind of group memory or how can Syl and Pattern both know about ancient events? (Pattern at least says he wasn't "alive" then) spren cities - what are they like, how are they built? spren politics - why do Cryptics have such a reputation, etc? What are they really? (I suspect they're actually "fictionspren") chasamfiends - where do they come from? do they have some form of spren bonding? are they related to santhids? can they be bred? glyphs - there has got to be a lot more to them if they spontaneously appear around Radiants. Feels like they could be some kind of hidden magic system and burning prayer glyphs somehow evolved out of this

As I suggested in my previous post, I think part of the problem is Adolin switches to next girl before even breaking up properly with previous girl. So even if previous girl is desperate there's not much she can do if she's repeatedly ignored... and I suspect Adolin would react quite badly to the more desperate girls. Which leads to the obvious question, why doesn't anyone "go for broke"? (eg physically seduce him) I think the main answer to this is that it's not a one-sided bet. Imagine you're the father of an eligible girl but your house is facing potential ruin - so you push your daughter at Adolin and hope. But, it doesn't work out. Do you go for broke, possibly "ruining" your daughter or do you marry her off to someone "safe" (eg an ally or someone you're in debt to)? Even if the father's a fool he would likely have some friends/family to point out that there's safer alternatives. Also, looking too desperate is basically calling attention to your difficulties - there is a very real risk it could make things worse. And precisely because the Kholins have very high social standing there's very big risks in angering them. I suspect quite a few are privately terrified of Dalinar, even if his reputation has suffered in more recent times.

Shallan's my favourite SA character currently but I'm agnostic on who she ends up with, if anyone - as long as it's interesting to read I'm happy. I think either Adolin or Kaladin could work... and either could fail. Depends how the characters develop.

I thought about this a bit: it is surprising that there's been no previous Brightladies keen enough to try to stick with Adolin. There must be some houses who hit trouble and would dearly like some money/prestige. Ultimately, the problem has to be with Adolin - he can't be that unlucky. I'm not going to try to guess why this is happening at a deeper level but it seems to me that Adolin is not going through a normal relationship cycle on the downward slope. At the start things are good but then start to fizzle out. He has wandering eyes and so starts courting the next girl before he's properly broken up with the previous one. So the previous girl starts being ignored and gets annoyed. This pushes Adolin to next girl even more. Previous girl then has little choice but to give up or make a scene and with the way Alethi society is going down that route would likely earn the girl a lot of scorn. So you need a girl who's desperate, persistent, tough, doesn't care much about Alethi society norms... and also enticing.

Elhokar sure doesn't get much love. Mostly just derision. Nohadan was right - sure is tough being king Does make me wonder where Brandon is going with him. It doesn't feel like he could work as a bad guy. From listening to stuff like Writing Excuses, I'm sure Brandon is entirely aware of how most readers would see him, so he must have some interesting plans for the guy to do this deliberately. Poor guy has Marie Antoinette for a wife too. Elhokar's trauma for the last 6 years has been about the Assassin in White, who is now officially dead. So, he should be feeling happy about that. And the war against the Parshendi has been won as a bonus. All good? Nope, his wife just decided to start a riot in the capital. I wonder if she and the baby are even alive. Oh, and the world's about to end too. I think Elhokar's problem as a king/person is he doesn't really have a strong sense of how to go about achieving what he wants to do. This makes his leadership inconsistent and incoherent. It's also a difficult hole to dig yourself out of. I wouldn't shed a tear for him if Elhokar went sleep-walking in the middle of the night and fell off Urithru tower never to be seen again. I just don't see Brandon doing that though.

Peter, I think we need to create a new spren in FeatherWriter's honor. I'd like to suggest: giddyspren (they should be due any minute... now)

I think that's his personal gripe. Would be ironic if was all the Ghostbloods since Sons of Honor want to restore power of the church too... But I think Ghostbloods are more of a group of off-worlders anyway - I doubt they're that interested in Vorinism as a whole.

Here's some things I've thought of before but not yet written up: We know that the Stormlight Archive is split into two 5 book parts with a time gap between them (10 years or something). I suspect that the remaining 3 books for the first half will deal with defeating with the storm that the Parshendi created and the spren willing to trust humans enough again to bond them in significant numbers. The Parshendi storm might not be the true Everstorm but a warm-up. In the second half we'll see a "proper" Desolation, large numbers of Radiants, massive progress in fabrials and maybe the Heralds coming out into the open again. While working on my posts, I was looking through some older interviews with Brandon last night, from before tWoK came out. It's quite interesting looking back at them now: http://www.theoryland.com/intvsresults.php?kwt=stormlight%20archive' Sounds to me like the Radiants are supposed to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem, even if they did screw up badly once. We'll have to see... The quote above is quite interesting. I suspect there's lots more to come about the Horneaters. Rock says they were feared in the past. I have wondered if maybe, just maybe, that in Dalinar's Recreance vision that the Radiants could have been fighting Horneaters but that would require the Horneaters to be far far more dangerous than we had thought previously. I also get the feeling that there's just a bit too many references to Shallan's red hair likely pointing to Horneater blood in her ancestry - that it's foreshadowing... something.

That's how I saw it too. I suspect that Jasnah can do more simple types of Soulcasting without explicitly entering Shardsmar - and expect Shallan to be able to learn to do the same.

I don't know how long you spent writing that post in the link but if you have as much trouble writing quickly as I do it would likely be a day or two To respond to this as briefly as I can: I don't see Surges as being "power" themselves but expressions of power (Stormlight specifically), like how the force of gravity isn't weakened by it acting on something. From a story/plot point of view I also don't like the idea that the only power the protagonists have to fight back with dooms them in the long run - it also makes Honor's recommendation to reform the Radiants seem odd to say the least. You could argue that maybe Odium has twisted Honor's "recording" (like Ruin in Mistborn) but I really doubt Brandon would want to repeat himself that way (between series he seems to prefer doing the opposite of what he's done before or something completely new, from what he's said/written on the subject). We don't really know what's going on in the background but we do know this: http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=836 "What I probably should've said to be more precise is that Honor and Cultivation were there long before Odium showed up." http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=1041 "Odium's presence is felt on Roshar, but he is on Braize, the 3rd planet in the system." In the letters from/to Hoid in tWoK/WoR I don't know how literally we should take them but I don't see how Odium can be imprisoned in the normal sense if he's actually on Braize. It's even harder to imagine how something specific to Roshar (eg Stormlight, Surges etc) could hold Odium captive on Braize. It may be that a part of Odium's power is stuck on Roshar and that has weakened him enough that he doesn't want to risk leaving Braize again to attack other Shards (including Cultivation) but I don't have any particular evidence for that. From what Honor tells Dalinar it sounds like Odium has something to lose - maybe Odium is at risk of permanently losing the part of his power on Roshar rather than temporarily losing it which is why Odium is being patient and careful (it seems). If the Surges themselves could somehow trap this part of Odium then my suggestion above could work with yours but I just fundamentally don't see the Surges working like that in the first place. If Surgebinding is the fundamental problem then whatever is causing the Surgebinding should not matter - a Radiant "drawing down the Surge" should be no different from a Herald or fabrial doing the same. I don't think it's possible to draw down a Surge of course but even if I'm wrong I don't see how Nalan's words can be evidence for your theory unless you also accept he's being incredibly unfair/inconsistent. PS Note to all I've been arguing with here: I can sometimes be quite direct and blunt. If so, please don't let this put you off. In general, I'm totally fine if any of my predictions are wrong because it's generally much more interesting than being right What I mainly hope to get out of these discussions is ideas I wouldn't have thought of otherwise - I've had a few just writing this post.

btw, has anyone noticed that Adolin is practically a definition of "prince charming"? is a prince - check is charming - check has majestic white horse - check (at least up until part 5 of WoR) has big shiny sword - check has shiny suit of armour - check is nice but bit shallow - check

Moogle, I'm not saying Nalan is wrong but that we readers are misinterpreting him (or rather, falling into Brandon's trap). I'll do a summary of how I see things. This is the summary of my theory on the Recreance: The Radiants were fighting each other (probably reluctantly in most cases) as part of a big war between kingdoms. They were basically weapons of mass destruction and the Recreance was the solution they came up with to stop the terrible destruction they were already causing and to prevent the same thing ever happening again - by murdering their own spren. I've gone into more details in other posts. In Dalinar's Recreance flashback, the Radiants are definitely involved in some big war against an enemy that's deliberately kept vague. It's hard to imagine them fighting non-humans as the Voidbringers were gone and there's no known force could possibly stand up to hundreds (maybe thousands) of Radiants... except other Radiants. If the Radiants had a legitimate enemy it's hard to imagine them abandoning the fight mid-way. I can think of some other possibilities but I like this idea since it's simple and fits well with the general theme of the Stormlight Archive. So when Nalan tells Lift that "Others may be detestable, but they do not dabble in arts that could return Desolation to this world" I think he is specifically referring to the destruction the Radiants were directly causing in the events immediately leading up to the Recreance in my Recreance theory above. Given how Nalan is on following the law / personal code of honour I think it would make plenty of sense that he really hates the Radiants for breaking their Oaths and that he feels justified on preventing another Radiant war. Now, on to the reading that somehow Radiants can indirectly cause the return of Voidbringers and a Desolation in the normal sense... If we just consider Nalan's actions, we only ever see him take action against proto-Radiants. If Surgebinding by itself is the problem then this makes Nalan self-contradictory since he should be against Szeth running around Surgebinding with an Honorblade, against fabrials and against Surgebinding animals (I suspect skyeels and chasamfiends are such though we've not seen anyone in-world express such a view yet). Nalan knows about Honorblades and Szeth, he knows about fabrials and he knows about larkin at least. So if Surgebinding by itself is the problem then Nalan is being very erratic in trying to stop it. If Surgebinding humans are the problem somehow (seems to require some convoluted arguments) then why doesn't Nalan ever complain about Szeth? With my theory I think Szeth is given a free pass because Nalan sees him as highly honourable unlike the Radiants of old. If we ignore Nalan's actions then I still see problems: there's a non-trivial gap between the Last Desolation and the Recreance which means that if Surgebinding can somehow cause a "normal" Desolation then it's awfully indirect. Given that a "proper" Desolation never occurred after the last official one, there's no actual proof of a connection. This would make it awfully difficult to prove to the Radiants at the time of the Recreance that they need to take drastic action to stop it - it's the exact same problem Jasnah has in trying to stop the parshmen becoming Voidbringers in advance: the proof needs to be overwhelming. If the Heralds had proof it's hard to imagine how they could find out after the Last Desolation - and if they knew before then they should have done/said something at the time of the Last Desolation. Also, if Nalan has "proof" that Radiants/Surgebinding brings Desolations then why does he add the "could" qualifier in his infamous quote?

And as sane as any human who was broken enough 4500 years ago to abandon a friend/colleague? If this has not been eating away at him I'd be very surprised. For reference, here's a previous discussion on the sanity of the Heralds: http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/6959-heralds-getting-worse-an-attempt-to-systematize/ Here's a quote from the very same chapter (not a co-incidence I suspect) as an example of "Desolation" being used to describe something other than an attack of Voidbringers: Note that in your quote, Nalan doesn't say "a Desolation" or "the Desolation" or "Desolations". Unlike Taln: Nalan would have seen the events leading up to the Recreance. If Radiants were fighting each other on a large scale that could easily be considered to be as damaging as a real Desolation. This is why Nalan doesn't say "a Desolation" or "the Desolations" in the quote above. Though obviously, this interpretation of mine would be far clearer if he said "desolation" instead of "Desolation", but I think a very simple theory that requires little/no assumptions is a lot better than a big complicated theory that requires lots of assumptions. If that was the case then the Voidbringers would return quickly after the "Last Desolation". But they don't.

I'm not sure how far I'd trust a guy who thinks that a mass murderer (Szeth) is the most awesome person on the planet. Lift doesn't think he's human. There's hints in the books that the Heralds in general aren't exactly sane any more and I'm pretty sure Brandon has said it's a subject he wants to delve into. But even if he's perfectly rational it's also perfectly possible that the interpretation of his words is incorrect. There's also no evidence that Voidbringers can turn up without the Herald(s) returning - they're returning now because Taln is back. Hard to prove something is true if it's never happened. Another problem I have with the theory is that Stormlight gets used anyway - it leaks from the gems whether it's used or not. So why would using it for Surgebinding have some horrible side-effect when using it for lighting doesn't? And why aren't fabrials a problem either? Why is it okay for Szeth to Surgebind? It also feels like a poor storytelling device since if there is some effect it would be really indirect - there's a big gap between the Heralds leaving and the Recreance. Several generations at least. Maybe even 1000 years or so. btw Confused, you say that he "frequently states his concern that surgebinding will bring on a Desolation". I can only find one reference (at the end of the Lift chapter). I did a quick check of the text and can't find any more. And in that one reference, his usage of it is a little odd - he's referring to it more like a description than an event.