kari-no-sugata

"The windows into a person's mind and spirit" - Shallan, p118 of the hardback. We have the "Double Eye of the Almighty", we have people's eyes burning out when cut with a Shardblade, we have lighteyes vs darkeyes, and we even have changeable eye colour. Clearly, in this series in particular, eyes are important. I quickly put together a list of eye descriptions I could find. This is *not* intended to be exhaustive. Gavilar: pale green (p33) Kaladin: dark brown (p39) Shallan: light blue eyes (p65) Jasnah: pale violet (p83) Taravangian: pale green (p84) Gaz: brown (p100) Kabsal: blue (p121) Szeth: dark green (normally), pale - almost glowing - sapphire when wielding a Blade (p178) Elhokar: light yellow (p188) Adolin: blue (p227) Laral: bright pale green (245) Female Radiant: light tan (p303) Male Radiant: bright blue, almost white (305) Navani: light violet (317) Talenel'Elin: dark brown (p1001) Can't seem to find Dalinar's or Renarin's described but would be easy to miss in such a big book. I haven't checked, but I dont remember Brandon so persistently describing eye colour in past works. Surely light vs dark is important in Vorin culture, but maybe hue has some importance too - while hair colour is inherited and eye lightness/darkness is inherited, it seems the eye hue may not be (at least, I haven't spotted any family patterns yet). That Szeth's eye colour changes from green to blue upon summoning a Blade is very suspicious, though whether we will be able to make any predictions about characters simply based on the hue of the eyes I dont know - I dont necessarily think that eye hue helps indicate which order of Knight Radiant you might be in for example, but it might mean something else. No big theories here: just decided to pull together some data, since I couldn't find a similar gathering - though eyes have been discussed before, I haven't seen a thread dedicated to it.

Mmm, that's actually a very simple and straightforward theory... If we had proper descriptions of all the Heralds then it would be fairly easy to prove or disprove too.

I had noticed myself that the races were unusually diverse, and thought this was "suspicious" - based on normal genetics and the history of the world I'd expect just the opposite. There's also the red haired people of the "horneaters" and places nearby... and a few more I think. Cultivation does seem like a good bet for the cause, but I've got no idea how we could use this to predict future events.

Hi all, thanks for the responses. Normally when I do a big post, I spend a lot of time researching things and double-checking things... and sometimes it gets so tedious I end up not posting. So with the original post here I decided to just go "what the heck" and simply go ahead and post it when it hit me - and hope I dont get things too badly wrong. After finishing to re-read the book earlier I realised that later on, regarding theories on why the Parshendi killed Gavilar, Jasnah does actually come out and say what I was reading between the lines (that she had no good ideas herself, considered it very important, and was hoping for some ideas from Shallan) I also read that these "dying messages" started appearing around the time Gavilar discovered the Parshendi. These messages are certainly not natural and I really doubt any planet-hoppers could do this - I think it is fair to label the Shards as the prime suspects. But which Shard? Honor is "dead" - I guess you could say his Shard's power is still active but has no "brain" directing or changing things. Honor did setup those messages/visions for Dalinar (and others no doubt) to see so maybe he was also able to prepare things that could activate under some simple logic trigger as an early warning system to the world. I suspect that's about the most we could expect from Honor.

The following is something that occurred to me today while doing an idle re-read... "What is the point of research if not to draw conclusions?" The above quote is from page 461 of the hardback, when Jasnah and Shallan are talking about Shallan's research into Gavilar's death and why the Parshendi did it and/or took credit for it. When Shallan is asking why she has to do this, Jasnah talks about making it easier "to ease you into true scholarship" etc, but I get the feeling that that's just a convenient excuse. Reading between the lines I get the distinct impression that (I) Jasnah has no good theories for the murder herself and (II) is vaguely hoping for some off-the-wall / random ideas from Shallan. I'm not saying that Jasnah expects Shallan to be able to solve the mystery - just that she might think of something Jasnah hasn't: after all, she says "Youthful immaturity is one of the cosmere's great catalysts for change, Shallan. [snip] Gavarah hadn't reached her twentieth Weeping when she proposed the theory of the three realms." Shallan complains at length about the crack-pot theories she's been forced to read. I guess nobody in-world (in the public scholarly community) has any good theories either. Ok, so here's my random idea... The ultimate mastermind behind Gavilar's death was: Cultivation Gavilar's death set a lot of new things in motion that would not have occurred otherwise. Though it has lead to war if anything it has (I) helped unite the Alethi (II) alert the whole world to the Parshendi. To me, this doesn't feel like something Odium would necessarily want. It's hard to tell if the Parshendi are part of Odium's "forces", Honor's "forces", are good/neutral/evil etc. It's also hard to tell just what influence Honor's thoughts may still have in the world. But, putting that aside... what motivation would Cultivation have? Well, maybe she could see that while Gavilar was along the right track that he would ultimately fail. Maybe she could see that if Gavilar died, and died in a particular way, that Dalinar would succeed, or at least have a real chance at succeeding. From what I remember Brandon saying before, Dalinar seems to be the "real" main character of the series as a whole - based on that, I don't think it's too far-fetched to have a "god" actively meddling with his fate. I think it's plausible that Cultivation is trying to alert people in the world and help resurrect some old knowledge. It's hard to say how much direct and precise control she has over events and what Odium might be doing to counter things but let's say she deliberately engineered the following: (I) for there to be a new (and very rare) Truthless among the Shin (which ended up being Szeth) and for such a person to get involved in world affairs, to showcase some "old" magic abilities and maybe help the second coming of the Knights Radiant (II) for the Parshendi to be re-discovered in a public way (III) for Gavilar to die in a particular way that would set Dalinar along a particular path that would end up with him getting messages/visions from Honor. Of course, the above could be desired by any "anti-Odium" forces so none of this uniquely points to Cultivation, though I think she would be best placed to have ancient knowledge about the world and the ability to bring about these events. Another counter-argument would be that not all the effects have been positive either - whether that's because my theory's wrong or because Odium is manipulating things too is hard to say. In the end there's a lot we still dont know - for example, why is Honor dead but Cultivation still alive? Did she reach some bargain with Odium? Hopefully we'll find out eventually... Hope this all makes some sense.

Some quick thoughts and observations before I go to bed... not checking book for reference. Early in the book Shallan says/thinks something like how spren dont really have a physical form - if you move your hand through one, you dont feel anything, though they kind of dissipate. However, Shallan was able to touch the "truthspren" it seems, when in her room, just before she soulcast. Seems to me most spren appear when things "change" - we dont have static "water" spren we have dynamic "rain" spren, dynamic wind spren rather than static air spren. etc. Now, "The Almighty" is also known as "He Who Transforms". Maybe when things change (naturally) in the presence of Stormlight, spren appear (or are strengthened enough so that they can become visible). Then maybe Soulcasting would be a sort-of reverse transformation : taking Stormlight + spren to change things (artificially). Note, not all spren may be named properly though, so shouldn't base too much off names, but they dont seem to "just appear" - they seem to only appear when things are happening. Maybe some or all spren can feed off changing human emotions or human actions and become progressively intelligent if particular emotions or actions continue. Maybe some kind of positive feedback loop can develop between a spren and a particular human, resulting eventually particularly strong and powerful bonds. Regarding Shallan and creative/honest. There's more to honesty than "not lying". For example, being "honest to your feelings" - Shallan tends to show her feelings quite strongly and freely, which is perhaps why she gets teased a fair bit ^-^ Ditto "honest representation" (ie an accurate drawing rather than a flattering one). Also, almost all her chapters have her considering truth in general, have her worrying about lies etc. Very early one she says she hates being duplicitous, or something like that. Yet, she's doing it to save her family, though this isn't pushed strong or hard early on - maybe Brandon didn't want readers to sympathise too much with her initial plans. Shallan also reacts quite negatively to the "assurance movement" (or whatever it was called) and so on. She certainly seems to care about "the truth". The first time she goes to Shadesmar is for a very simple "truth" - I'm terrified. I don't think it's as much as offering a "statement of fact" as being a requirement but rather (the act of) bringing yourself to admit something is true (being honest with yourself). The second time she Soulcasts, Jasnah berates Shallan for using "only a single dun sphere" or something - maybe that's why she needed to offer something deeper that time?

On continent map at the start of the book, there are lines of longitude with degree markings. The 0 line would presumably be the equator.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_longitude Determining lat/long on land seems to be relatively easy - technology seems basic enough that it's quite reasonable that it would be in use on Roshar, assuming it's very Earth-like. It's determining it on sea that's a real problem. On the other hand, if Roshar does have an erratic angle of tilt I suspect determining latitude might be rather more difficult.

Hmm, fair enough. I did say "there's been a lot of speculation of how Szeth pending attack on Dalinar could turn out" but I didn't go into everything I had thought of. Szeth's been ordered to make a "messy" attack on Dalinar. Which likely means public. Dalinar's skilled and got good people to defend him, so a battle could get somewhat extended, meaning that other characters could get there if they're not there at the start. For example, there's been plenty of speculation of Kaladin getting involved - all quite reasonable. Shallan and Jasnah could be there at the start, or arrive there during the battle. Dalinar is Jasnah's uncle, so she wouldn't just sit back if she felt she could make a difference. We saw what she did to those thieves, including one she didn't even need to touch - medium/long distance attack, which would be very useful. However, I suspect it wouldn't work too well on Szeth since he'd be carrying lots of Stormlight. So imagine Jasnah attempting to attack Szeth but it not working very well, so he decides to go kill her before she gets a better chance to hurt him. This is when Shallan jumps in as a sort-of human shield, while until that point she'd probably be cowering in a corner or something (she doesn't like violence). But why would she do something so dangerous? Well, she respects Jasnah for one. She might guess that she's likely be killed by Szeth anyway (since he's probably killing everyone). There might be another motivation too - Shallan needs some way to save her family, and that means a load of cash, and maybe the easiest way is Jasnah decides (for various reasons) to lend her the money personally, or arranged for Shallan to get a loan - so if Jasnah gets killed then her loan, and hence her family, could be in deep trouble. Hope that makes some kind of sense Heh, I like to play around with various ideas - this isn't a prediction, just some ideas/scenarios I came up with for fun. I tend to think of them as simple but they take a while to actually write up...

Whoever the Ghostblood Shardbearer Kaladin killed back in the day - small minor detail turns out to have big consequences when all the facts are known.

Some "bromance" between Kaladin and Adolin would be fine. I also have this strange idea of a Shallan/Szeth relationship. There's been a lot of speculation of how Szeth pending attack on Dalinar could turn out (personally, I'm betting on Talenel now) and in the past I had this idea of Shallan pulling out her shardblade at the last second, surprising Szeth and almost killing him - imagine Szeth charging towards Shallan (who'd be unarmed at the time and clearly defenseless since woman dont fight) only for a killer blade to appear between them at the last possible moment, so close that Szeth thinks he's about to die and almost welcomes it but natural instincts/orders means he's not allowed to die so has to do a clumsy emergency dodge which puts him in a bad position allowing him to be captured. In my scenario, Shallan had been looking into Szeth's eyes at the time and realised that he had in fact wanted to die, making her curious. I think Shallan can be a "healing hands" type character (and considering her brothers she's fairly used to "damaged" people) and Szeth is already going pretty crazy - he could certainly do with some "healing". Could be interesting but I'm not going to ship it. Personally, I don't mind who ends up with who or noone at all so long as it's done well. There's lots of potential for fun

If you sped up natural healing by a factor of 10,000-100,000 it would still be natural but would enable healing that's so fast you can see it happen. So the force could be "time".

Shallan's sword could fit a very lose interpretation... but it's hardly "hidden in plain sight", though I'm tempted to argue for it just because of how silly I thought some of the examples on the tv-tropes site are. Rather than a gun hanging on a wall it's a hidden side-arm that that's almost been drawn twice. So, just some foreshadowing really. The Parshmen might be a sort-of "Chekhov's Army"

Allow me to muse over various things here... One thing that is rather strange about Roshar is the weather/seasons. It doesn't seem to match very well with any seasons on Earth (which are a bit more complicated/varied than the normal 4 in any case). Weather on the Earth is largely driven by the temperature difference between the poles and the equator and the seasons by the tilt in the axis - things seem to be very different on Roshar. We know that the High Storms have a clear "supernatural" component, but, was there some natural big storm (like the red spot on Jupiter) that picked up the supernatural component or is something supernatural causing/persisting these special storms? Can't say yet. So inferring the shape of Roshar from the weather seems quite problematic. Still, I'd be surprised if Brandon hadn't put a lot of research into this, since it is a major aspect of the world and he really seems to enjoy working out such things (as do I). I'd certainly expect there to be some "real world" physics underpinning some of the effects. I'd certainly expect Roshar to be spherical. Random thought: while the tilt on the Earth's axis is pretty much fixed on a human timescale maybe the tilt on Roshar's axis is highly variable on a human timescale? By itself though I don't think a highly variable tilt would be enough to explain the seasons: there is a lot of thermal inertia in the Earth's seasons. So in the northern hemisphere June is not typically the hottest month of the year, despite being the month that gets the most energy from the Sun. In short, Earth's 4 main seasons are offset by about 2 months from where they would be based on solar radiation alone because thermal inertia smooths things out. In comparison, Roshar's seasons seem to be way too chaotic and fast changing to be explained by purely physical processes - or maybe the whole concept of seasons and what's driving them is very different. It would be interesting to know if the duration of a day (time between sunrise and sunset) on Roshar is related to the seasons in any way: are days longer in summer than in winter? If there is a strong correlation that would suggest a wildly changing axis. If the time of day is more or less the same during the year (for the same location) then that implies a fixed axis. If there was a stable tilt that should result in predictable summer and winter solstices making for a much more reliable definition of a "year" than "weepings" - so either nobody on Roshar (that we know of) cares about that or the actual effect itself doesn't occur (to a measurable degree). Does anyone remember any references in the text to duration of the days being variable or the like? btw, I'm no weather or climate expert. I've read up on it a fair bit of the years but some of the above could be wrong, misleading or badly explained. PS Did anyone else notice that the main continent seems to be in what us Earthlings would call the Southern Hemisphere? Sort of like a colder, wetter and wider/bigger Australia since I seem to remember that what seemed to be the equator going through the Purelake or near enough - I'm pretty sure latitude was indicated on the main world map.

Not that it really matters but I seem to remember reading that a spinning globe will cause side-effects in large bodies of water... but also that they'd be subtle enough that you'd really need to be looking at them from space to verify them.

Hmm. I don't think the whole of the shattered plains is already carved up between the Highprinces in this way - else why are there races for time over gemhearts? If every single plateau was owned by a particular Highprince then you'd only see 1 Highprince challenge for any gemheart - whoever owned the plataeu the target was on. Do you have a quote to mind about these "owned" plateaus? I can't recall anything myself but I could certainly understand plateaus immediately outside a particular war camp being "owned" by a particular Highprince (and them being tradeable at the margins). I'm speculating here but maybe getting "ownership" over a particular plateau was simply about putting some permanent scouts on it, rather than being some kind of official legal contract with the King that all Highprinces would obey. In other words, ownership requires permanent and active maintenance. And cost - if my speculation is correct (and I hope it seems reasonable) then the more plateaus you own the more it costs continuously. So then only plateaus immediately outside war camps would be owned and most would be "unclaimed" allowing anyone to cross. So, shear expense would preclude a Highprince creating a long "highway" of permanent bridges - it would require permanent guards to stop other Highprinces from using it, and such guards would be extremely vulnerable to enemy attack. This is my thinking too. I think soulcasting is mostly about creating "components" and is done in private. Additionally, I suspect that soulcasting 1 item requires 1 gem - and that the bigger the item the bigger the gem required. That is, you can't use many small gems to soulcast one big item. (Has this been stated anywhere? It's a bit hard keeping all the info in the book in memory ^-^) Most gems would be small so most soulcast items would be small - hence, components.

This has already been raised but I suspect a lot of the "stupidity" is because we have 10 war camps competing with each other. Looking at the map on page 182 (hardback) or here: http://isaacstewart.com/images/wok/tWoK_MAP-3_SHATTERED_PLAINS-webres.jpg We see that the war camps are tightly clustered together. For the first few chasms outside each war camp, they would be pretty much exclusive to that war camp and there definitely are some permanent bridges around (see pages 102-103). I suspect these are pretty much only right outside the war camps. If we consider the relative size of the war camps to the shattered plains then the number of permanent bridges required to make a significant difference to mobility would be very large, as would the "free rider" problem. If one Highprince decides to make an "express way" to the big tower plateau, then the immediately adjacent war camps would be able to use maybe 90% of it, and even those furthest away would probably be able to use 50% of it. The Highprinces are as much concerned about one-upping each other as fighting the Parshendi so they wouldn't too keen on an idea that costs them a lot but where their immediate neighbors get most of the benefit at zero cost. So, given the competitive costs and benefits no single Highprince would make the first step in isolation - from the sounds of things, the costs of basic materials is very high, much higher than it would be on a typical war on Earth. However, if the war camps could be united forcibly to work together for the benefit of the group, then the cost/benefits change entirely - if everyone shares the costs of building a wide array of permanent bridges, then everyone would benefit equally and no single High Prince would gain an upper hand or lose out in costs. However, again looking at the maps, I suspect even then the costs would be very large. Even a theoretical (^-^) dictator wouldn't be able to force the Highprinces to commit economic suicide. The Highprinces are currently winning, what, 50% of the total available gem hearts? Maybe if they start winning 90% due to increased mobility and organisation then it would be worth the cost to the group. It would probably require such a payoff in gemhearts just for it to become possible to Soulcast so much anyway.

Hi all, my first post here. A collection of ideas... One hard thing to predict in specifics would be the effects of certain "late arrival" who turns up right at the end of book 1. I would speculate on the following general stuff though: that most people would have trouble accepting anything he says (despite his special sword), probably because it would go against Alethi customs / generally accepted customs. I bet Kaladin would want to talk to him though - I'd expect he'd find out about him quite quickly and would likely have access. Maybe Kaladin will (secretly) start to believe much earlier than anyone else but will keep it to himself to protect his own secrets. However, I'm sure some things our late arrival will say will be proven true during the course of the book, forcing people to take him more seriously. Kaladin has a really deep and dangerous hatred of bightlords and brightladies in book 1. While he's finally found a brightlord he can trust a bit, I doubt this hatred has suddenly gone away. If anything, the pending arrival of a certain Shardbearer is going to make things worse. Basically, I suspect Kaladin still has some inner demons to fight. Shallan is definitely going to be interesting. Here's a fun bit of speculation I'm going to throw out - I bet she gets "assigned" to help Kaladin with clerical duties and the like. Kaladin would need a permanent one, given his rank, I should think. However, he would probably not want a brightlady clerk at all, and has probably chased some away already. Shallan is low in rank and so wouldn't be able to refuse. I suspect she might also need the money. She's also stubborn/strong enough that he wouldn't be able to chase her away. I also get a small feeling that maybe she will remind Kaladin of his mother in some ways (I haven't checked the reference but I think she had a similar way with words). I think setting up Shallan as Kaladin's clerk has a lot of "fun" potential (I started grinning to myself when I thought of it). One major problem facing Shallan in book 1 is saving her family from a financial crisis. I was a bit surprised at how readily she hopes to find some alternative solution at the end of the book, but I suspect there is an easy one - Jasnah will buy up the family's debts and give them a single low interest loan, effectively. I'm sure Jasnah has the financial muscle to do this easily, that she would want to help Shallan in general (and stop her doing anything crazy to save her family), and this would also give her an extra bit of leverage with Shallan (who is potentially dangerous to Jasnah, even if they get along in person). So instead, Shallan would probably be on the lookout for more normal ways to make money (hence clerk for Kaladin). Though I normally try to resist "pairing up" characters, it's hard not to with Shallan - there'll be a bunch of options within easy reach, as it were. First there's Kaladin the brooding up-and-coming commoner. Then there's Adolin, who'd effectively be the opposite of Kaladin - much higher ranking, much easier to be with than Kaladin, though still serious and certainly not some court fluff. Given how quickly he goes after new girls, it certainly wouldn't be a surprise if he made a pass as Shallan, and he certainly wouldn't fail to notice his cousin's new ward. Then there's Renarin - of the 3, I wouldn't be surprised if Shallan feels most comfortable around him... and as others have speculated, it may well be that Shallan helps cure his "blood sickness". That being said, I'm not sure how ready Shallan would be for romance, given what happened the last time things seemed to be going well. One thing I definitely hope and expect to see is Shallan getting into some kind of drawing competition with the other court ladies. After all, we've seen Shallan bring out dozens of creation spren, if I remember correctly, but the average court lady could barely manage a tenth of that. I'd expect we'd see some bitchy types to challenge Shallan early on, suspecting she's no good since Jasnah isn't known for her drawing skill, only to find they couldn't be more wrong Lots to look forwards to, and lots more to speculate on still, but this post is already long enough I think.