heridfel

I re-read the fight in Words of Radiance where Kaladin grabs part of the Shardplate to use as an improvised shield. The way he swings it around, there is no way that it is made from an extremely heavy super-metal. Even with the Rosharan gravity making units of weight vs. units of mass wonky, it would be like trying to parry things with a 40 lb. barbell. But this is apparently not a new problem so it doesn’t belong in the new lore thread. It’s also weird that the Ryshadium carrying capacity bonus isn’t listed in the mounts section but only in the stat block (and that it doesn’t line up with lore either).

I was startled to see that Shardplate apparently weighs 1400 lbs, or about 635 kg. That doesn't seem right, as the book confirms the previous lore that it takes a team of trained professionals to doff or don it in a timely fashion. That suggests that its largest sections are still light enough that people can lift them. I'm not even sure they could be loaded onto a chull-drawn cart if they are that heavy. We're also told that when Shardplate is no longer Invested, the person inside is only Slowed*, which doesn't fit with being stuck inside armor which weighs that much. The normal rules for the game say that you can't move if you exceed your lifting capacity, and non-Invested Shardplate exceeds everyone's lifting capacity. Put another way, most characters in Invested Shardplate couldn't lift another Shardplate. * In terms of game play, that means a Leader with Relentless March or an Envoy with Devoted Presence can yell/talk in a way that not only allows a person in broken plate to move, but to move even faster than they normally would. A Relayform Singer just ignores that downside of broken plate. But that's game mechanics rather than lore. EDIT: Yeah, I'm going to say that Shardplate weight is an error. Later in the book, we get the carrying capacity for a Ryshadium and it's only 1000 lbs. In their description, it says "They stand an average of two hands taller than horses of other breeds, have stone-like hooves that don’t require horseshoes, and can carry a warrior wearing Shardplate into battle—a feat which would injure or kill other horses." A normal horse's carrying capacity is 500 lbs, so that suggests the weight of a rider in Shardplate (plus saddle, other weapons, etc.) is somewhere between 500 and 1000 lbs. That would put the Shardplate as weighing somewhere between 300 and 750 lbs.

We finally got Szeth’s detailed flashbacks and his life story. I was looking forward to gaining some insight into the Shin, as Szeth is by all accounts atypical: a trained assassin from a culture which prizes peace. The only other Shin I recall from the previous books was a merchant who negotiated by pointing out all the things which were wrong with his own goods. But when I sat down after finishing Wind and Truth, I felt like I didn’t know anything about Shinovar that I didn’t already know. Szeth goes from sheep herder to warrior monk in the blink of an eye, and both professions are extremely isolated so Szeth doesn’t seem to interact with many people. When Szeth and Kaladin return to Shinovar, it is almost empty and the Shin people who they encounter seem like nameless NPCs in RPGs. Shinovar has villages and towns, though none are large. Some people intentionally break the stone and metal taboos so they can get jobs, or are less religiously observant than Szeth. Did I miss anything substantive about Shinovar and Shin culture which couldn’t be extrapolated from what we already knew?

Actually, I could see it. Let him start arguing, then say something like this in her own voice. ”He said that he was going to have me make his case for him. When I refused, he decided to change the rules and start making his own argument. As soon as something doesn’t go his way, he changes his mind. He says that he can be bound by oaths and contracts. I know you are a great negotiator. You had better hope you write the best contract in the world without a single loophole because remember: he isn’t just one of the parties in the contract. He’s also the judge.” Consider this: there is a recurring theme in the Stormlight Archive that the only winning move is to not play the game your opponent wants you to play. Jasnah might need to to learn that.

This is basically what Dalinar had been doing for months: acknowledging that he had failed in the past and demonstrating a commitment to doing better in the future. I would add that “sometimes I don’t live up to my principles” beats “I lack principles and am powered by negative emotions”. TOdium will claim to have principles but we see that they are discarded whenever they would conflict with his selfishness.

Echoing some of the points which others made, we have been repeatedly told Jasnah is an excellent scholar and philosopher. Her mother, her uncle, her brother and cousins, even Hoid all are impressed by or in awe of her intellect. This is the first time that she gets into a debate with someone who doesn’t enter into the debate expecting to lose… and she loses. It’s a bit of us being told, not shown, just how good she is at debating. It’s a bit of the Worf Effect, where this is meant to show how great TOdium is at debating by making Jasnah defeat herself. But like with Worf, if we only see Jasnah lose when faced with a credible opponent, it makes her look less competent rather than making her opponents look skilled. It’s especially disappointing to me that we are told that she has regularly endured ad hominem attacks because of her atheism but she flounders when Taravangian pulls out her past actions to argue that she doesn’t always follow her own philosophy. It seemed like the first time she has ever been challenged in that fashion.

Thank you for saying this. I felt the same way. Shallan’s struggles, more than any other character’s, are internal. She learned things about herself and her past, but had nothing to do with the central conflict of the contest between Odium and Dalinar. The Ghostbloods are tied to the greater cosmere, but if Shallan hadn’t killed Mraize and Iyatil, nothing would have changed in this book. To me, she feels like a secondary character masquerading as a primary character, with most of her actions feeling like foreshadowing for when something will finally matter. I liked the second half of the book better than the first. The preview chapters had left me with a bit of trepidation as we bounced from viewpoint to viewpoint without anything really happening, and while the multiple viewpoints arguably got worse in the latter half of the book, it felt like the story was moving along again. I wish that Brandon had focused on fewer characters. I know this is the finale of the first major arc and we all have our favorite characters, but getting a couple paragraphs at the end of a chapter for Jasnah or Sigzil to remind us that yes, they’re still doing something on Day X seemed to distract from the more meaningful storylines. If those characters had gotten dedicated interludes instead at their most important moments, I think it would worked better than the vignettes like “here is the Mink being an escape artist” or “here is Ryan deciding to leave”.

I will pull a Hoid. No Shards for me, thanks. I'd like to retain a bit more of my free will.

Hoid was lying when he said that the only woman on Roshar his age was Cultivation. Shallan has lost all of her memories from the old days, but still vaguely remembers that she killed Adonalsium. It was her all along!

That reminded me of a question I had - do we have a WoB as to whether Aimians could form a Nahel bond? I’m not asking whether they ever had, since Venli may be the first Radiant who is also Parshendi, but whether it is even possible?

My thought was that at least one of Dalinar’s oaths was not of the Bondsmith order: “If I must fall, I will rise each time a better man.”, but that it was still Accepted. That would explain the Stormfather’s confusion, along with the claim that this has never happened before and Dalinar himself saying that they are something new. Though if he ends up getting extra Surges as a result of that oath, I’ll be the first to complain about his hacking the system.

Well, I have to acknowledge that evidence hurts my theory. It is possible that Frost was speaking poetically, but that is about all it could be unless Frost is wrong about the nature of Rayse’s Shard (which I still think is possible - old and Cosmere-aware doesn’t mean omniscient - but unlikely). I still think that something is going on which makes Odium different - I know we have not seen many original Shardholders who haven’t been near-death and capable of interacting with “normal” humans, but the way Odium feeds on passion/hatred/self-hatred does not seem to fit.

For a Shardholder that we believed to have the Shard of Hate, which was taken on by a nasty person to begin with, Odium comes off as surprisingly calm. He sees himself as being the Shard of Passion, and others note that he seems to feed on passion. However, I think that for as long as he has been around and influenced by the Shard, he still seems too in control of himself for either hatred or passion to be his main focus. Instead, I think that he is the Shard of Betrayals. This would explain a lot of things. We find out that Odium is a human god, but he is leading the Listeners/Singers against the humans. The Stormlight Archive starts with nine of the ten Heralds betraying the last one so that they can avoid further torture. All of the humans which Odium or his Fused recruit (or attempt to recruit, in the case of Dalinar) are betraying humanity: Moash, Amaram, and Taravangian all join with Odium not because they believe his side to be the right one, but because they believe his side is the stronger one or because of personal benefits. This sets them apart from Nin and the Skybreakers, who join for reasons of morality, even if that morality has been twisted. If Odium is the Shardholder of Betrayal, he would still be able to make long-term plans, act calmly rather than passionately all the time, and it would explain how he could continue to destroy other Shards since Betrayal is nearly as destructive as Ruin. The only trouble I have with the theory is explaining how he could be held by the Oathpact, but maybe it is as simple as “you cannot betray someone unless they trust you”, and so he has to be able to act in a way to make others trust him in order to fulfill his Shard’s Intent. Thoughts?

Another possibility is that Renarin chooses to remove the gauntlet because he believes that he needs skin-to-skin contact. I'd have to re-read Dalinar's memory of Regrowth-based healing to see if the Radiant in the memory explicitly took off Shardplate in order to heal. If that was the case, then that'd be much stronger evidence.

Thank you for consolidating those prefaces. My hope is that whoever the in-universe author is, it's someone who isn't used to writing. The sentence structure is so simplistic that it hurts me to read it all at once. That makes sense when the out-of-universe goal is "let's come up with something that I can break up and put in the front of chapters of my book", but the main effect in-universe (intended or not) is that the author is a drill and the reader and her listeners are the materials being drilled. It suggests a personality like Dalinar's, but the text itself doesn't support his being the author very well.

Ah, it’s rough to have each character getting a chapter. While trading off like that isn’t bad when you have the whole book, I want some more meat with Kaladin. Even so, I think we are getting a hint of what his next oath will be: protecting the former Parshmen is the right thing to do, even if it brings a lot of complications with it. It’s hard to say whether Adolin is relieved or more worried now that Shallan says she’s going to give him a little chance for mystery. I think part of him wants to confess, but he’s afraid of disappointing his father. Nothing new to say about the Dalinar bit, since I had seen it before. Still fun to see the brute he used to be.

There's one bit of dialogue which points towards a stumbling block that Adolin would face if he meant to re-awaken his Blade: "I’ve always kind of known. Not that it was alive. That’s silly. Swords aren’t alive." Maybe he is flexible enough, mentally, to change that way of thinking. But it's pretty clear to me that as long as he does not think of his sword as alive, it won't be. By the way, the modern term for multiple personality disorder is dissociative identity disorder. Shallan's version may or may not be possession-form (where a personality can "take over") - it's harder to tell if other people can notice the change in behavior when she can literally change her appearance to match the personality.

On the other hand, we've got a few examples of parshmen-cum-Voidbringers acting in unusual ways (stealing boats, etc.) which don't line up with the behavior of Listeners, and we know that there are some Listener forms which exist but haven't been shown on screen. Mediationform and smokeform both could assist with gaining illicit access to a spanreed and faking correspondences. Also, we have seen a cabal of humans who were trying to bring back the Voidbringers as part of a convoluted way to return the Heralds. It's not a big step from there to a cabal which wants to work with them for reasons, even petty ones. I don't view this as the most likely of the scenarios - if anything, "Gawx was doing something else" would get my vote because he would be involved with any negotiations with Voidbringers, and that would be a more immediate priority - but I don't think we have evidence to contradict it from what we've seen so far.

I don't know: would you consider the possibility that the Voidbringers (or a group allied with them) have infiltrated the spanreed as a subset of A, or its own thing? I agree that Gawx probably would not have responded in that fashion unless he was totally captured by the system, but it isn't as though there is something in place to authenticate who is using a spanreed beyond handwriting analysis. Even that wouldn't really help because scribes are getting replaced all the time - the whole "men don't need to know how to read and write" thing really bites them in the butt there.

I greatly enjoyed these chapters. An end (or at least a pause) to "Renarin is faking being a Truthwatcher", and the same for Syl/Kaladin relationships. I don't know how that would work, don't want to know, but at least neither of them seem to show interest in it - more family than romance. Oh, and some more indication that Elhokar might end up a Lightweaver. Admitting truths to himself, seeing more Spren when he's around other Radiants... though I'd be just as happy if he ended up a squire to Kaladin.

If Shardblades were reasonably generic in appearance, then stealing one from the guy you just killed isn't a completely terrible idea, presuming you can somehow smuggle it away. Of course, they are rare enough that it'd be pretty reasonable for anyone you know to ask, "Hey, where did that Shardblade come from?" That is an awkward question - the sort that leads to a whole bunch of darkeyes getting killed. But when each blade is distinct enough that someone looking at it says "Hey, why do you have the Shardblade of the guy who was murdered a little while ago?"... yeah, good luck convincing people that you found it tossed out a window.

I think that you are overestimating the stability of the Alethi political structure. The requirement for becoming a Highprince is essentially having enough power to get people to call you a Highprince. I think that "Sadeas' camp", left without an heir, would quickly devolve into the lesser Brightlords who were under him trying to take on his role. For the challenges of trying to maintain a dynasty in Alethkar, look no further than House Kholin. Elkohar is the son of the first king in modern history, and is showing all of the problems associated with the ruler changing from a great man and powerful warlord to his son, who is not nearly so impressive. There are plenty of people who have a living memory of his father, which would normally help to find support for the heir, but it's taking Dalinar to keep the whole thing from fracturing. It doesn't help that he's responsible for some of those fractures, but that's who Dalinar is.

My first thought for the new potential murderer is an assassin sent by Ialai. It seemed like Sadeas' murder was going to get swept under the rug - I mean, Dalinar holds a wedding officiated by the Stormfather right afterwards! From a political standpoint, that'd be a pretty good distraction. By having someone else murdered in the exact same fashion, it forces everyone to confront the first murder as well. She seemed cold-blooded enough to have someone killed just to make a point, and we know that Rosharan nobility isn't averse to hiring assassins...

My opinion, after re-reading Stick's scene, is that Shallan failed to Soulcast the stick into fire because she didn't have the right intent. She starts out with a statement about herself: "I need you to become fire." Then she follows it up with a possibility: "You could be fire." After asking some questions of Stick and Pattern, her final statement/command is: "You want to burn." I think that last statement is the best indication of why she was failing from the start. The entire time she was in Shadesmar, Shallan was trying to light the sticks on fire using Stormlight. Her mental image was the stick catching fire (because that was what was natural to her from the material realm) rather than being fire . Rather than changing from one reasonably pure Essence (Pulp) to another one (Spark), she was trying to have the stick become consumed by fire (Pulp and Spark, fire + stick). There was no other Essence to convert, and so Stick remained a stick. In the other cases where we've had large-scale conversion (like the bandits, or the large stone, or the ship, or even the goblet), there was a relatively straightforward conversion of Essences rather than anything partial. I think it would require a lot more Stormlight or a much clearer Intent for a mixed conversion, if it's even possible at all. I think if Shallan understood Soulcasting better, she could have picked up a rock, put it in the middle of her sticks, and changed the rock directly into fire. It would have saved more wood, too. TLDR: Stick wasn't resisting Shallan's attempt to Soulcast it. Shallan was trying to create fire on the stick, and Soulcasting only converts Essences. It doesn't create them.

I think that it is unlikely that an allomancer would be able to push on aluminum with an induced magnetic field. The challenge is that whatever you are using to induce the magnetic field is probably going to be much susceptible to allomancy than the aluminum itself - paramagnetism is not very strong compared to ferromagnetism. While I was researching my answer to your question, I came up with a related one of my own. If you heat an permanent magnet past its Curie point, the thermal energy disrupts the aligned magnetic spin in the material and it is no longer magnetic. So if an allomancer were suspended above a vat of molten iron (above 1043 K), could he Push on it? Oh, finally, according to the entry for Steel on Coppermind, it isn't dependent on magnetism. That fact doesn't have a citation with it, but presuming it's based on a WoB, this was all just fun theorizing.