hoser

I actually think it's the other way around. The Shamanate being armed with Shardblades is what keeps the normal fighters as the lowest class. If not for the Stone Shamanate violently putting down any violent efforts on the part of the normal Shin warriors, warriors would be lords and farmers would be peasants like many other places. As it stands, if a warrior decides he wants to take over with some of his mates, the Shamanate takes up their Honorblades and kicks butt. Just my opinion.

There is another line of thought which has Ishar as the beggar. That would leave Jezrien and some of the female heralds unaccounted for.

We know she talked to the highspren, but she has had time to have done much in many different locations. I also think that, as a Surgebinder for the last 6 years dodging assassination attempts alone, she had battle skills before the last few months. I agree that she has probably been in the physical realm, but conceivably she could have transformed something into her backpack while in the cognitive. I also agree that she could be fleeing from anyone or anywhere, except that whoever it is must be truly formidable. Burns, you say. Where else have we heard of fires? Braize/Damnation?

Possibly. But the Stormfather is insane and overprotective of his "daughter". If Syl had induced her own "death" by forcing Stormlight through a marginal bond, I could easily see the Stormfather wrongly blaming Kaladin.

Tragic slip?

This is fascinating. If the Skybreakers and their highspren are extremely orderly, I can imagine that the highspren would not come into the physical while Nalan is killing surgebinders. There are two important questions that underlay my analysis of what is happening with the Skybreakers. Is Nalan a corrupted renegade Herald serving Odium or is he still fighting in an insane way for his particular flavor of honor? For simplicity, I am ignoring the possibility that he is corrupted, but the spren can't tell, but it seems possible. Really this question might better be: Are Nalan and the highspren working together? Do Nalan and the highspren recognize that the Desolation is here and that there is no longer any point in killing surgebinders? For simplicity I am ignoring the possibility that only one or the other sees it that way, but it also seems possible. This leaves us four possibilities: Nalan is a corrupted renegade and they know that the desolation is here. Nalan will find twisted ways to undermine the resistance to Odium and excuses to kill surgebinders. The highspren will flood into the cognitive and form (or they already have set up) alternate "real" Skybreakers. Nalan is a corrupted renegade and they don't know that the desolation is here. No change. Nalan will continue to exterminate Surgebinders and the highspren will either be staying in the cognitive or creating "real" Skybreakers. Nalan is an insane servant of Honor and they know that the desolation is here. Nalan will start supporting surgebinders instead of killing them. The highspren will flood into the cognitive and work w/Nalan to make "real" Skybreakers. Nalan is an insane servant of Honor and they don't know that the desolation is here. No change. Nalan will continue to exterminate Surgebinders and the highspren will be staying in the cognitive. Normal provisos apply: I know nothing. There are many other possibilities. This is just offered to stimulate discussion and more inspired thinking of others, but please don't ridicule my thoughts too harshly.

These are excellent questions, IMO. The possibility I see is that he is not living his oaths even before he commits to working with Moash and Graves: Focusing on killing Amaram is not about life before death and journey before destination. Murdering Amaram would be achieving a result by bad means. Conspiring to allow the king to be killed is also bad means. So Kaladin is already failing the first oath and it weakens the bond. Murdering Amaram for revenge and helping kill the king are also not protecting those who need it, so he is not living the second oath. At this point Syl seems cognitively regressed and he can only draw stormlight when Syl is nearby. She is also nearby less as the following quote from chapter 68 shows. Syl doesn't even seem to be consciously doing anything. The bond is just weaker and only works when she is very close. I think what must kill the spren is deliberately acting to provide the bond's benefits to a knight that is not keeping the oaths. So Kaladin's actions at the moment are okay by the oaths, but Syl must not be near. She must sense his need and consciously extend benefits to him, even though she is not close. Acting to benefit the renegade Knight must be what kills the spren. There are problems with this theory: we don't know that Syl wasn't close and we have very little data to support it. The possible implications are very interesting. If Syl could just disconnect rather than die unless she actively supported Kaladin, then what does that say about the Recreance? Those spren could die without being in sword form, as happens with Syl. Does sword form count as deliberately benefitting a forsworn knight? The spren must have known what was coming. The Radiants acted in a coordinated fashion and must have discussed it beforehand in front of their spren. Did the spren involved in the Recreance choose to die? If they had not been in sword form, could they have just gone stupid, but not in screaming sword form?

Great questions and discussion! Apparently some highspren, the type bonded to the Skybreakers, have survived. This might be why Jasnah tries to get information from them. There are other ways for the Skybreakers to get deadsprenblades. They could have taken deadsprenblades from people who picked them up from orders that had recreanted. The Skybreaker order could have stopped binding spren, but passed away from natural causes with their spren bond intact. Nalan could have kept the name for his organization even though he eventually had no more Radiants. Now that the Desolation and the Everstorm are here, it's possible that Nalan has changed purposes. He apparently knew about Szeth's fight with Kaladin, but didn't intervene to try to kill Kaladin. I wonder whether he is still hunting proto-Radiants. He may want to get his hands on the Honorblades, and is using the pretext of the Shamanate's mistaken judgement of Szeth to do so. And my point was that spren-bonded Skybreakers are bound by at least two and possibly 5 or more oaths. The first oath would cause them to avoid wanton slaughter. Ishi presumably constrained all the orders to make them generally different flavors of honor. The Skybreaker second oath is not their only one, so they have more constraints than simply following the law.

Um, no. Cenn wasn't protecting Amaram. From the end of chapter 1: Even if you put the law before everything else, once you have satisfied the law, there is still everything else. No law required him to kill wounded who were no threat, particularly in this case, where he wants to kill Amaram and doesn't really care who wins the battle. Since he is not legally required to wantonly slaughter wounded soldiers who pose no threat, all else is definitely relevant.

Um, no. Because Kaladin doesn't have a Shardblade and is horribly outnumbered, the situations are not comparable, but he only kills the Parshendi that are a threat or interfering with his objectives. He is satisfied with wounding them when he can get away with it. Cenn is wounded and Dallet is waiting with him to get medical attention. They are out of the battle and are neither a threat nor able to interfere with his objective. He slaughters them just because he can.

That is how I read it also. I go back and forth, though. It tells us that Mr. T thinks that Heleran might have been a surgebinder. I doubt that a spren-linked surgebinder would engage in the wanton slaughter that Heleran did to Dallet and Cenn. Would Nalan have taught people to be spren-linked surgebinders when he is simultaneously murdering them using the flimsiest of pretences? The only way I can square the circle is that Nalan calls his organization the Skybreakers, but hasn't been training the members to be surgebinders or Radiants.

Presumably relevant is this quote from Kaladin's POV when he and Shallan are out in the highstorm: I guess these might be larval Chasmfiends that Kaladin sees. They are glowing like crazy and if they are continually charged during the storm, that's a lot of investiture. Even if they are not larval chasmfiends, they are presumably a greatshell of some sort.

I struggle with these arguments. Are these not straw man arguments? Consider this instance Statement 1b says that a result achieved by bad means is not good. Statement 1a says that a result achieved by bad means is bad. Statement 1c demands that Dalinar act in a way that will be suicidal and ineffective or he is violating 1b. The book has statement 2a, an ambiguous non-confrontational statement. 2b is an arguably inaccurate interpretation including the questionable assertion that it is a lie. 2c is a further exaggerated analogy. These steps of questionable interpretation and (what I see as) exaggeration undermine the validity of any subsequent argument IMO.

The specificity quote from the in-book WoR could also mean that there are only one or three specific spren that commect to Bondsmiths, cryptics pair up only with Lightweavers and honorspren exclusively bond Windrunners. I'm not sure what you mean by Symbolhead, but it sounds like the form Cryptics take in the cognitive realm. I believe Pattern is the same Cryptic that Shallan communicated with in tWoK.

Can you tell me anything about Darkness's facial scar or when he acquired it. Did the Radiants have a way to communicate person-to-person across distance? Are highstorms the shockwave of a global explosion? There are lines on the surgebinding chart between the symbols for diagonal orders and between orders 1-4 and 6-9. Can you tell me what any of these signify? Do they represent additional Radiant abilities?

Great work! Upvoted! I'm delusional and make things up? Apparently I just made a pattern based on the above passage and the statement that no one had seen a chasmfiend larva. If the larvae made their pupae during the highstorms, it would just tie things together neatly with a bow. Now none of it makes sense to me. If the things that Kaladin sees are larvae, do they just hang around the chasms until some random time before pupating? What do they gain by waiting in the chasms? What are these things doing with the investiture they have from being infused? If they are not chasmfiend larvae, then what are they, where are they going and what are they doing? I presume the highstorm things are not adult chasmfiends because Kaladin would have recognized them. From WoR Chapter 49:

Chapter 2 is very soon after Mr. T's conversation w/Szeth. It includes "The emperor of Azir, dead." Before, talking to Mr.T, Szeth researches the hit, which must have taken some time. Thanks for the evidence. I wasn't aware of that statement. The missing piece for me is the connection to the Honorblades. The radiant symbols are glyphs in the shape of a sword, yes. Jezrien's Honorblade is long and narrow, so that kinda fits the Windrunner glyph-sword if we ignore two thirds of the glyph. Taln's Honorblade is shaped like a spike, which I don't see in the Stoneward glyph-sword at all. This doesn't seem conclusive to me. What am I missing? Do other people see these as specifically the images of Honorblades?

In the runup to the release of WoR some of us elected to commit to positions relevant to the Stormlight Archive Realm. With the release of WoR, some of these issues have been settled and others may have arisen. Here is the post-WoR update. Please let me know if you disagree with the assessments herein. From the Stormlight Archive forum: SETTLED: No (I claim that Kaladin's ability to heal shard severed limbs and the ability to infuse on the part of their followers settles this one). Surgebinders will have no more than 3 powers, and specifically windrunners will only be able to infuse and perform the 3 lashings as defined in the Ars Arcanum of tWoK. Wrong: cem?, Natans, Mailliw73, marianmi, Gloom. Right: hoser, Argent?, Aether, Moogle Windrunnners have a "Force Push" ability. Yes: Aether, Mailliw73. No: Natans, marianmi, Chrono The Stonewards have a communication ability (I believe the female knight exercises it in the Starfalls vision, but I don't know if that will ever be confirmed). Yes: hoser No: Moogle, Natans, Mailliw73, Kurkistan There are 10 different types of spren that give the ability to Surgebind and they are all Splinters. Yes: cem, hoser, Natans, Mailliw73, Kurkistan, marianmi, Chrono, Gloom Stormriding: is a side-effect of either being a Surgebinder or a Radiant (therefore available to all surgebinders). Yes: cem. No: Natans, Mailliw73, marianmi, hoser, Chrono, Gloom. Riding the storm is the Windrunner special ability. No other Radiant order will be able to do it. Yes: Scott, Natans, marianmi, hoser, Chrono, Gloom. No: Mailliw73 SETTLED: Yes. Szeth is in possession of an Honorblade. Right: Aether, Bloodfalcon, Natans, marianmi, Gloom. Wrong: MadRand, hoser, Mailliw73, Kurkistan, dyring SETTLED: No. Shardblades are corrupted (Wrong: marianmi) by Odium. Wrong: Mailliw73. Right: MadRand, Natans, dyring. SETTLED: Yes.Shallan's brother (Nan Heleran?) was the Shardbearer who attacked Amaram back in Alethkar. Right: Moogle, Natans, Mailliw73, Kurkistan, dyring, marianmi. SETTLED: No. Dalinar will be a Stoneward. We will see his spren in WoR. Wrong: Scott, Natans, Mailliw73. Right: marianmi. SETTLED: Yes. Kaladin will wield a Shardspear in WoR. Right: Scott, Natans, Mailliw73, Gloom. Wrong: marianmi Baxil's mistress is Shallash. Yes: Moogle, Natans, Mailliw73, Kurkistan, marianmi, Chrono, Gloom The two Surge-charts were created by Honor and Cultivation and establish the magic system. Yes: Bloodfalcon, Natans, Mailliw73, Gloom No: Kurkistan, marianmi The Order images on Cultivation's Surge-chart (woman, big gem, lightning) are images of spren. Yes: Bloodfalcon, Natans, Mailliw73 No: marianmi The Order images on Honor's Surge-chart (Radiants) are images of Honorblades. Yes: Bloodfalcon, marianmi, Gloom No: Voidbringers will have the inverse characteristics of the Heralds. Yes: Natans No: Mailliw73, marianmi, Gloom The Tranquiline Halls and Damnation are both based off of real places in the Physical Realm. More specifically, they are other planets in the Roshar System. Yes: Gloom, Natans, Mailliw73. No: marianmi SETTLED: No. There are no spren created (without having previously existed in another form) by Odium. Wrong: Gloom, Mailliw73, marianmi, Chrono, Gloom. No: . The Radiants had a plan when they Recreanted that included saving information for their resurrection with the Vanrial. Yes: hoser, Natans. No: marianmi, Gloom SETTLED: Yes. Urithiru is located on the main continental land mass of Roshar to the west of Alethela in the physical realm. Right: hoser, Natans, dyring. Wrong: marianmi SETTLED: Yes. Szeth gets his windrunner abilities from his Shardblade. Right: hoser, Natans, Kurkistan, marianmi, Gloom. Wrong: Mailliw73. The parshendi killed Gavilar because "The evil sphere of doom" was a corrupted spren that could create a "voidbringer parshendi form". Yes: Natans. No: marianmi, Aether, Gloom. SETTLED: No. Shallarin (Shallan-Renarin shipping) will happen in WoR. Wrong: Mailliw73. Right: marianmi The Ten Fools will have the inverse characteristics of the Heralds. Yes: Mailliw73. No: marianmi Syl is no ordinary honorspren. She is qualitatively different from other Honorspren in addition to her unique personality. Yes: bartbug. No: Kurkistan, Mailliw73, Aether, Gloom. Kaladin's father, Lirin, will end up working for Taravangian. Yes: Gamma Fiend. No: Mailliw73, Chrono, Aether, Gloom. Kaladin will wield a Shardspear in book 5. Yes: marianmi, Mailliw73, Gloom. SETTLED: Yes. By book 5. Right: Aether. SETTLED: No. Renarin will become a Skybreaker. Wrong: Mailliw73. Right: Aether, Gloom. If Adolin becomes a KR, he will be a Dustbringer. Yes: Mailliw73. No: Aether. No more than half of the POV characters will become Radiants before the end of the series. Yes: Kurkistan, Mailliw73. No: Gloom. SETTLED: Yes. Gaz will resurface alive. Right: Fistsofrage, Mailliw73, Aether. No: . SETTLED: Yes. Bondsmiths are Order 10. Right: Moogle (+eat hat). No: . There is never going to be a real sex scene. Yes: Galladon, Mailliw73, Gloom. No: . Over 85% of all the theories in this thread will be wrong. Yes: Gamma Fiend. No: hoser, Mailliw73, Gloom, Aether. The gems built into pre-Recreance Shardplate were there since before the Recreance. Yes: hoser, Gloom. No: . SETTLED: No. Moash is a bastard son of a lighteye or he is a darkeye born of two lighteyes. Wrong: Natans, Mailliw73. Right: Gloom. By writing The Way of Kings, Nohadon altered how bonding Spren (Nahel Spren) select their human partners - much in the same way Geranid and Ashir were able to "lock" Flamespren to a certain measurement by writing down its values. Yes: Aether, Mailliw73. No: . From the Steelhunt forum: SETTLED: Yes. Darkness=Nalan. Right: Mailliw73, marianmi, Bloodfalcon, Ethrien, Gloom, ADIMORTIS, kraefzke. Wrong: jasonpenguin, Meg. Jezrien is incapacitated (drooling) or the "Have you seen me?" guy in the prelude. Yes: Mailliw73, marianmi, Bloodfalcon. No: hoser, stormfather, jasonpenguin, ADIMORTIS, Meg. SETTLED: No. Szeth kills the Azish primes after his conversation w/Mr. T at the end of tWoK. Wrong: hoser, Bloodfalcon, jasonpenguin. Right: stormfather, marianmi, Ethrien, Gloom, ADIMORTIS. One or more of the Heralds had a role in the Knights Radiant disbanding (Fistsof rage, please delete the post proposing this from the Stormlight Archive forum. I think it is an excellent claim, but spoilerific). Yes: Fistsofrage, Gloom, jasonpenguin, Bloodfalcon, kraefzke. No: ADIMORTIS. Kokerlii's (thought-detection-blocking bird) power works nearly identically to Allomantic copper, though perhaps on a different power-level. Yes: Kurkistan, ADIMORTIS No: jasonpenguin. Once an item is SETTLED, no more names will be added to that item. I will compile results later.

I would call Ym as Edgedancer unlikely as his spren did not resemble Wyndle at all, his spren called for him to use the light (perhaps as in an illusion) and he did not manipulate friction to escape. The spren seems appropriate for one that grants the illumination surge.

I think the person Hoid was referring to avoiding in tWoK was Odium. He has this to say about Odium in WoR (ch 67):

This seems really interesting. Pattern describes being part of everything, then gaining consciousness. Questions just manifest like creationspren around Shallan. Is the era in which the spren comes to sentience relevant to the gender that it manifests as? If some people in a given era see honor as feminine and others see it as masculine, do we get some of each gender or do they all take the prevailing perceived gender of the time? Does location matter? If an honorspren manifests in the part of Shadesmar corresponding to Alethkar at a time when honor is perceived as masculine in Alethkar become male?

Apologies to all if this has already been pointed out. One of the little mysteries of the Stormlight Archive is what larval chasmfiends are like and why no one apparently ever sees one. Kaladin has been through two highstorms now and there is at least one significant difference. In the second highstorm, where he is huddled with Shallan in the chasm wall (ch 74), they see some creatures. After the highstorm, there are chasmfiend pupae.(thank you, Seloun) I guess the glowing creatures in the highstorm aremight be larval chasmfiends. I don't know how much it matters really, but it was one of these weird little mysteries that might end up being relevant somehow. It seems strange that Shallan doesn't comment on them. There is another description of a highstorm in chapter 49 which isn't as clear: Are the many-legged glowing creatures at the warcamps? They don't pupate at the warcamps. Do they go past the warcamps? Do they go back to the Shattered Plains? Is this section referring to something else inside the stormwall? Edit: despoilerize title, add second quote, remove erroneous extrapolation

I have two minor points that seem relevant, According to Pattern, all the bonded Cryptics were wiped out in the Recreance. So any Cryptics that Ishi swore to anything are gone, assuming that Ishi hasn't been busy swearing them since the Recreance, which seems unlikely. Shallan remembers saying the first Oath, which Pattern says is essential and, in fact, the only Oath that lightweavers have. from ch 75 True Glory:

Timing and priority, IMO. Timing and priority - With more than one thing going on in the world, it is plain impossible to treat every one as the top priority and drop everything to handle them in a process-oriented manner. On that interpretation, nobody could accomplish anything. If it takes a week to try Amaram and everyone dies to the Desolation, that is clearly not feasable. And what if somebody does something else before you are done trying Amaram. Do you have to stop everything for that? What journey before destination has to mean is not to lose sight of priorities and reality, but to apply it to the highest priority problem that you are working on at the time. So if Dalinar had to slaughter masses of uninvolved innocents to defeat the Voidbringers, a la Mr. T, that would clearly be unacceptable. Being unable to recognize that you have bigger fish to fry seems to me an insane interpretation of the first ideal. As Dalinar says, there is no point in imprisoning a Shardbearer. No prison can hold one. Trying is a foolish waste of time that might cost some guards their lives.

I agree with Eejit and Aleksiel. There are differences between Relis and the others. Relis is not a proto-Radiant and is presumably mentally weaker. It also makes Renarin's incapacity heroic, as he even tried to train and fight with the screaming going on. The story demands that Relis lose. If He doesn't run away, how are unarmed and stormlightless Kaladin & co going to beat him? Some supporting evidence for the screaming being the cause is Kaladin's comment that he doesn't think anybody besides he and Relis heard the screaming. Finally, Relis has bonded the blade and used it for years as the reigning dueling champion. He may be more linked to it and more affected by it as a result. His dialogue suggests that he got more from it than Kaladin did