ivoryblade

I have a few thoughts...

• The KR were being used to fight "devils" (see: Dalinar's vision of Feverstone Keep). So they were definitely needed for a war, though not necessarily against Voidbringers. They abandoned that fight.
• The men who took up their Shards were the worst sorts, those willing to kill to get at the weapons. For a while just after the Recreance, the people with Shards might have pretended to be (or people just assumed them to be) Radiants. So, if you've got a bunch of invincible warlords with Blades and Plates going around murdering and taking power(?), and people think they're Radiants, that's going to sully their reputation.
• The Radiants locked down Urithiru, which was a central hub for trade. It's hard to overstate how valuable literal teleportation is and how much it contributes to the economy. Imagine if every highway blew up tomorrow: it'd be chaos. This would very easily be hated by the majority of people.

Regarding your first point, I doubt the people would hate on the KR for that. Their conception of history is so distorted they barely even know what Voidbringers are. I highly doubt they would have known there were other creatures who posed a threat other than Voidbringers. The people have believed themselves safe, that they’ve won, after the Last Desolation.

Regarding your second point, if the people were hating on the KR because they had gone about killing people, then wouldn’t Dalinar, who knew the truth from his visions, have felt compelled to speak otherwise?

And regarding your third point, while it is very valid, I don’t think that’s the main reason. Otherwise it wouldn’t be considered a failure of Vorinism; just an economic failure.

The fall of the KR occurred after the Last Desolation, which people believe involved the Heralds taking the battle against the Voidbringers up to the Tranquiline Halls. If the Voidbringers were gone, what would have been the use of the KR? Why was it so bad that they disbanded?

What about Dalinar and the Stormfather?

EDIT: I misread your post; I see you’ve already taken this into account. My apologies.

What’s the biggest archive for fanfiction for SA? (There seems to be awfully few fanfics out there for SA.)

What does it mean when spren die? They lose their sentience in the physical realm, but are they still sentient in the cognitive realm?

I believe that was a special case: Dalinar was already a proto-radiant with a weak bond to the Stormfather, and he was compatible with the bondsmiths. Plus, maybe Honor implanted an order into the Stormfather's mind before dying: find a bondsmith. We know he couldn't refuse to deliver the visions, so it is not a stretch for him to be unable to ignore the Words.

May I ask what you mean by ‘proto-radiant’?

Nightblood forms a sort of bond in order to speak to people in their heads.

Maybe the bond was necessary for the visions?

But one of the commonly cited evidences of the Nahel bond is a distaste for Shardblades. Dalinar clearly did not feel any animosity toward his Blade. (And I don’t believe him giving Oathbringer to Sadeas was driven in part by that.)

Meaning, the bond must have begun after tWoK.

Since Dalinar practically forced the Stormfather to have a bond with him, does that mean that anyone who has been sufficiently broken and acquainted with a spren can become a Radiant? Anyone can demand a bond?

I've been of the thinking that Dalinar forced the bond right at the end of WoR.  I'd be interested to see your sources that swayed your thinking.

I updated my original post.

There has been evidence in WoR that Dalinar began bonding with the Stormfather before he said his oaths, such as when he felt bad about holding Taln’s Blade or when he recalls having once healed using Stormlight. However, when did the bonding process start? As far as I can see, the Stormfather was quite unwilling to accept Dalinar’s Words, so I find it hard to believe that he initiated the bond to begin with. When did the bonding begin, and why did it occur between Dalinar and the Stormfather? (I used to think that Dalinar demanded the bond with the Stormfather, but it seems that the bond had been forming before then.)

EDIT: below are quotes evidencing that Dalinar bonded with the Stormfather before he said his oaths.

Dalinar smiled grimly. "If possible. At least now I've got a way to fight that assassin, if he arrives. With all the Shardblades flying around lately, I figured having one myself made too much sense to ignore." He narrowed his eyes, turning eastward. "Even if it feels... wrong somehow to hold one. Strange, that. Why should it feel wrong? Perhaps I just miss my old Blade.”

 

(WoR, chapter 76)

He felt his wounds healing in a familiar way [after breathing in Stormlight]. He'd done this before, he sensed. On the battlefield earlier? His arm felt fine now, and the cut on his side barely ached anymore.

 

(WoR, chapter 89)

The ten heartbeats serve to synchronize the Shardbearer and the dead spren, giving the dead spren a pseudo-life force by which to operate as a Blade. Ten is a common number in the SA universe, so it should not seem aberrant that it will take 10 heartbeats to summon a Blade.

Below’s a quote from WoR, chapter 87:

“So they’re all spren,” he said. “Shardblades."

 

Syl grew solemn.

 

“Dead spren,” Kaladin added.

 

“Dead,” Syl agreed. “Then they live again a little when someone summons them, syncing a heartbeat to their essence."

Well... We know he was bonding Glys in chapter 14 when he received his Blade, but he had not said any oath as it presumably did not scream.

Sorry, but I don’t quite remember seeing mention of him bonding with Glys in chapter 14. Would you mind posting a reference?

I’ve always felt that Renarin constantly tries to make himself useful, particularly to his family and father. I do wonder why he never revealed his Radiancy to Dalinar when Dalinar had reformed the Knights Radiant; Dalinar was looking so desperately for a Radiant, and there Renarin was—yet he did not reveal himself to his father. What reasons would he have for not doing this?

When Mraize discovers that Shallan and Veil are the same person, he reasons that he saw her reveal her Radiance as she helped the army. But I'm not quite following his logic. Sure, Shallan infused spheres and operated the Oathgate, but she never did anything to reveal that she was a Lightweaver. How would Mraize just know that Shallan was Lightweaving as Veil?

Hrm. There was time but not, I think, opportunity for the garnet to be re-infused in a Highstorm, yes?

 

That alone should raise questions. Even without the Light being used, it's now been weeks since it was infused. It should have turned dun regardless.

TWoK isn’t that clear in my mind right now, but I believe that the incident of Shallan’s first Soulcasting and her ingesting Kabsal’s poison occurred quite closely to each other. She was hospitalized for ‘committing suicide’ to cover up for her Soulcasting, then Kabsal came to visit her at the hospital, and that was when she ate the poison.

Well (assuming you read WoR and it's the same gem)

Jasnah is a Surgebinder herself, so she probably just infused the gem with the Stormlight she was holding.

Hmm… this makes sense. I’m inclined to believe that Jasnah siphoned off some of the Stormlight from the gems on her fake Soulcaster and placed it into the garnet, since I doubt she’d be carrying all that Stormlight within herself all the time without glowing perpetually.

And I’ve read WoR… though Jasnah’s ability was revealed in WoK anyway .

Shallan turns the goblet into blood using the Stormlight from the garnet broam given to her by Kabsal. After Soulcasting, the sphere becomes dun:

Upon opening her pouch to check on the Soulcaster, she'd found that the sphere Kabsal had given her had stopped glowing. (The Way of Kings, 48)

However, when Shallan gets poisoned, Jasnah uses the same garnet to save her:

[shallan] upended [her safepouch], vaguely seeing a fuzzy golden object slip out onto the floor, alongside the garnet that Kabsal had given her. (The Way of Kings, 48)

With trembling fingers, Shallan reached to the pouch on the stand beside her bed. Inside, she found the garnet sphere that Jasnah had used to save her. It gave off weak light; most had been used in the Soulcasting. (The Way of Kings, 70)

How did Jasnah use the garnet when it was dun to begin with? Why would it even glow a tiniest bit afterward?

It’s been established that the more Kaladin acts according to Syl’s nature as an honorspren, the stronger their bond—Kaladin becomes stronger and more proficient at Surgebinding and Syl becomes smarter. This is accomplished not only through oaths taken, but also simply by Kaladin’s thoughts and conduct.

What makes me curious is why Syl would become more intelligible over the course of Kaladin’s slavery; he notes Syl following him around as a mindless windspren for a few months prior to the start of WoK, but it’s only when he stops fighting back—when he’s at the lowest of the low—that Syl appears to him as a sentient being. What caused this change in Syl? Kaladin has stopped fighting, has stopped striving for honor, yet it is at this moment that Syl emerges as sapient?

Forgive me for asking, but where in the books does it say that one needs to be broken before a spren bonds to him/her?

Oh right, got that mixed up... Sorry, my mistake, in my head this was a bit different. So new theory: She did remember what she did all the time, she just couldn't face it. She repressed it from her mind, doing whatever she could not to think about her past. Similar thing happened in WoK with the death of her father. She knew he was dead, she just avoid the thought that she was the one that killed him. So in the same way, she might remember that she has the Shardblade, but push the thoughts about previously using it out of her mind. 

 

I think, that with Shallan it was never about her memory and remembering (she always remembered), just about facing those memories and admitting to herself what she had done. For years she made herself live a lie, she convinced herself to this lie so much, that although she remembered the truth, the other version was true to her too and would probably pass the lie detector.

Hmm… I suppose. Yet there still stands the fact that having the Blade means having been bonded to Pattern. She must have been bonded to him when or before she first Soulcast the goblet into blood, or she couldn’t have Soulcasted. So the better question would be to ask when she began rebonding with Pattern?

I believe, she remembered that she has the blade just after she killed her father, or possibly even during the act. I think that she remembered how she defended herself against her mother after she killed her father. Before that, she believed, that her father protected her.

But how could she have remembered how she killed her mother when it was only at the end of WoR that she allowed herself to relive that event?

IIRC, because she repressed her memories, she severed her bond with Pattern. I believe that when she said her truth at the end of WoK, this remade her bond with Pattern, thus allowing her to use her blade again. I'm not exactly sure on the timeline, but this is my thought process behind your question.

But on the night where Jasnah killed the footpads, Shallan already knew she had the Blade on her. Moreover, during her very first Soulcasting, when she was afraid of the Cryptics in her drawing, she began the process of summoning her Blade.

What was the point of moving everyone to Urithiru? I thought they established that it was some place in the center of Roshar, and that it did experience highstorms. The everstorm would make its trip around the world and eventually hit Urithiru as well, would it not?

Shallan had her Blade at the time of her mother’s death, but it was locked away afterward, or so she thought (i.e. Pattern escaped). I can see why she wouldn’t have known that she had access to a Blade, since expectations and knowledge comes a great deal into play in the world of Roshar—if she didn’t believe she had a Blade, then she wouldn’t have sensed it with her.

That leads me to question when she claimed the Blade again. She definitely had it before the beginning of WoK, but after the murder of her father (or she would have just used the Blade to kill her father). There seems to be some connection to her Blade and her father’s death, since in WoK she states that the Blade was “the fruit of her sin.” Moreover, in WoR, she acknowledges that the Blade has saved her at least once before Tyn: “You’re alive because of that cursed thing. Again. Stop complaining.”

What does anyone make of this?

EDIT: Upon further reflection, I see that the only way Shallan could have had the Blade before meeting Jasnah was if she was already bonded to Pattern. However, she only rebonded with Pattern in WoR. How can this be?

"That," Rock said, "was a very fast way to get down. Ha! But it did not include falling on face, which would be fun. So you get only soft clap." He proceeded to clap. It was indeed soft.

Rock jumped up and grabbed it, then dangled from the wall, bending legs below. His deep, bellowing laugh echoed in the chasm. “This time, he holds me!"

 

Sigzil made a notation on his ledger. “Good. Keep hanging on, Rock."

 

“For how long?” Rock asked.

 

“Until you fall."

 

“Until I…” The large Horneater frowned, hanging from the stone with both hands. “I do not like this experiment any longer."