Zarepath

Oh, you.

Salvation and Damnation

This... is a good point. How can they so care for their own dead, and yet be so heartless to those who cannot protect themselves.

I think you'll find this behavior in most human beings, especially in war--we act incredibly honorably in certain spheres, and incredibly dishonorably in other spheres. Perhaps we're reading too much into their honorable behavior, and we probably do the same thing with characters as we try to line them into certain KR groups. People are complicated, even Brandon's characters, and they don't all necessarily have to line up perfectly into one caste or another, imo.

Guys, guys. What kind of promise would Demoux make that would have the potential to actually keep him around forever?

First of all, it would have to be some kind of promise with someone who can grant immortality or some other kind of magical power.

Now, answer me this: who does Demoux love even more than his wife? That's right; Kelsier, the Survivor.

We know from Marsh that Kelsier's still doing mischief via the spiritual realm at the end of Alloy of Law, which timeline-wise is, I think, at least close to WoK.

I think Demoux is doing Kelsier's work as the prophet of his religion and the physical hand of his will.

I really like this Nohadon theory. Especially because it relates to Dalinar's trajectory. He's constantly being told to "unite them," but it's not until the end of the book that he realizes that he can't just hope for people to band together; he's going to have to force them together.

He realizes that Nohadon probably had to do something similar, and then afterwards he wrote the Way of Kings. If we follow the theory in the OP, the way that Nohadon accomplishes that was by dragging a Dawnshard to Urithiru and re-binding everybody to a new version of the magic system.

What if Dalinar is meant to do the same thing? Fix the magic system by re-binding it according to rules of Honor? Maybe it's the only thing that finally gets Szeth to quit trying to assassinate him, too.

Of course, where is Dalinar going to get a Dawnshard? I suggest that the original 10 shardblades in the prelude, abandoned in that rocky place, are the Dawnshards. That rocky place that could potentially be the original Shattered Plains.

Dalinar is conveniently located next to the Shattered Plains. And the Parshendi do everything they can to defend and hide the depths of the Shattered Plains... possibly because there's a bunch of Dawnshards sticking in the ground there.

So Dalinar, in order to unite everyone like his idol Nohadon did, will need to fight his way to the center of the Shattered Plains, get a Dawnshard, figure out where Urithiru is and how to get there, and then use it to bind everyone.

I like this theory because I can see how that would work as a story, taking our character through a lot of Chekov's Guns and also leaving lots of room for great action scenes, conflict, and myth-exploration.

This is the most exciting theory I've read here, I think.

Oh! This last thought is excellent!

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

Jasnah can be seen as a Giving person. She allows Shallan to apprentice her (which, considering Jasnah's station, is pretty giving), and she gives of her Soulcasting talent to save Taravanggaigaviavnagivn's kid. In fact, all of her research is done freely for the good of the Alethi kingdom, despite not having any particular position of power or responsibility.

/stretching

...Hemalurgic Batman...

art by inkthinker

Calm down, everybody. It's clear that he was referring to the shaggy brown mare from The Wheel of Time.

My theory is this. Gemstones are the focus.

The gem is where the stormlight is held. Much like metal in Mistborn, the gem is the access to the power. The metal unlocks the sDNA action related to the metal's spiritual attribute. The gem unlocks the stormlight for use in soulcasting.

Even though the magic feeds on stormlight and gems, Awakening feeds on colors, and yet its focus is Commands.

Cross-Cosmere Questions:

1. Can a Tineye burn tin from Roshar and get the same effect as if he'd burnt Scadrial tin?

2. Can an Awakener use colors on Sel?

3. Do Elantrians have Breath?

4. Could Shallan and Jasnah access Shadesmar if they were on Scadrial? Would there be a Truthspren for Shallan to tell a truth to, or would the lack of spren prevent it?

(4a. Do we know how Jasnah accesses Shadesmar? I get the sense that she doesn't see Truthspren, so does she have a different way of getting there that we have any details on?)

Didn't Brandon say that Harmony is NOT a new melded Shard but just a name used to refer to Sazed? I believe he also said that the separate Intents of Ruin and Preservation still exist. Sorry I can't give you a quote, but I'm pretty sure it has been mentioned.

Yeah, Sazed didn't make up a new shard, he just handles multiple shards at once like a boss. No other shardholder's got anything on the Hero of Ages, what.

Can I throw something REALLY premature out there? Reading this, and then the back flap again, I'm setting my sights on the third man from the Interlude where Vao(Galladon), Temoo(Demoux), and Thinker(???) are searching for Hoid. The only reason I hesitate is because Ishikk treats him as though he's apparently the most foreign of them all(who knows, that could be an act, partially). But I really think that the person writing this isn't someone we know even a little bit. It's probably someone who has been referenced but never made seemingly important.

p.s., I'm not certain if I labeled those correctly. Sorry if i didn't.

I'm pretty sure that the third guy isn't native to Roshar. Not sure where the quote is, but I'm pretty sure someone's said that all three of them are from other, different worlds.

Personally, my vote is on Shallan being the VP for Book 2.

Shallan's ToDo

Goes to Shattered Plains.

Jasnah immediately finds Dalinar, and thus Team Kalinar (as they will now forever be known to me).

They discuss the nature of fabrials and his visions.

More AWESOME verification and quotations about the true Voidbringers and how they could possibly stop the AWESOMENESS that are the Parshendi.

Kaladin takes a secondary role to Shallan discovering more and more about the Cognitive Realm (Shadesmar) and just whatelse other pure awesomeness Brandon has in store for some sort of MINDBLOWING power combination.

Shallan shows of her MASSIVE ti Shardblade and reasons for killing her father at which point my mind will already have combusted.

Did I mention I like Shallan and Soulcasting?

what is this i don't even

I think that we'll be getting the most interesting information from Taln. With all the timeline and history debates, and discussion about the ten orders and such, you'd think having one of the original Heralds as a main character should help.

Stormlight 2 is almost certainly going to be published in 2013. Sorry.

Well, that's just great. Thanks for delaying everything, Sir Read-a-Lot.

Anybody else disturbed by the writer's stance that Hemalurgy isn't evil and is probably the most useful to the Cosmere when it involves stabbing magic users and killing them? That's some moral ambiguity right there.

I'm fascinated to see Hemalurgy on a Cosmeric scale, however. Would you have to use Scadrial metal spikes, but then you could use them on a Returned or an Elantrian... and then would you have to stick the spike back into someone from Scadrial, or could you stick it in anybody on the Cosmere?

Adolin's current girlfriend. I have the feeling she'll have a bigger part to play in the next couple books.

When she stuck around, I was almost certain she was a spy for Sadeas. She also happened to be around while Navani and Jasnah were spanreeding, I'm fairly certain. She's been around for some sensitive stuff, and we know that it's odd for Adolin to have a girl around for a while, and she's taken on a job that will keep her close to important things in Dalinar's house.

One thing to consider is the fact that not every single person on Roshar can be pegged down into two specific attributes. Perhaps Jasnah belongs to a specific order, but her personality is actually quite different. Does being in #5 necessarily prevent Shallan from having any of the attributes of the other 9 orders?

Additionally, does being in #5 mean that Shallan could never cultivate and develop the attributes of another order, attract its spren, and become a Knight Radiant of an entirely different order? Are these orders predetermined for these characters, or do they depend entirely upon the characters' choices?

So I think the question isn't what attributes define Jasnah, but how this magic system decides which attributes to file a person under.

Also worth noting is that perhaps the Parshendi ARE the voidbringers, but that their goals aren't in line with Odium's anymore for this Desolation. Somebody mentioned in another thread the idea that the Parshendi are engaging in this stalemate war with the Alethi (provoking through assassination, only matching their war efforts to keep the war going, fighting with honor, their shardbearer respecting Dalinar) to prepare the Alethi for the coming Desolation -- to get a big military force marshaled together and powered by all the massive gemstones they mine out of the Shattered Plains.

If such were the case, I'd be inclined to think that the Parshendi were operating very contrary to how evil Voidbringers might before a coming Desolation. It would imply that they know something's coming (which may just be b/c they're Voidbringers), but also that they're playing for a different team this time around, so to speak.

I've always been of the opinion that Dalinar actually requested to lose the memories of his wife -- that his loss of memory was actually the boon, not the curse. The memories were just too painful for him.

The reason that he wonders what Renarin would think of this is that the curse was Renarin's bad health.

It seems like the kind of twist that Brandon would write.