hoser

Good catch! Welcome! +1 If you want previous thoughts about this, or all the epigraphs, you may want to look here or here. There is some thought that these can be interpreted to be referring to current events allegorically rather than as predictions. The tower and the crown is also the symbol for House Kholin.

From what we know, no Radiantblade bearer or descendent of multiple radiantblade bearers is darkeyed (unless of mostly darkeyed descent). Unless we assume that all Shardbearers have married descendents of Radiants, doesn't that answer the question? I assume that at least some of the current lighteyes are descended from people who picked up Shards at the Recreance and never had a Nahel Bond. Is that wrong?

When Kaladin has been through enough (completed his character arc), then he can be killed off. I hope he has a lot more suffering ahead. He has to work through whether he wants to go the way of vengeance (which, no matter how justifiable, is on the odious side) or advance on the Radiant path, at least. As the blurb says:

Good work on the dates, CN! Navani might not have written in her journal immediately. Dalinar has to whip the other highprinces into shape, then do some force unification/retraining before launching the expedition. The Parshendi had weeks where they lingered after battles, then they stopped chasing gemhearts. The timing seems to me like it could be right for the Parshendi to go mass storm-form as the Alethi approach the center of the plains. Or maybe they get taken over by corrupted spren and Voidbring the heck out of the Alethi. I think the Chasmfiends may be intelligent too. I don't know how that would play out. Does somebody have a better idea?

Picking up the Radiantblade presumably changes the eye color and allows you to retrieve the sword from wherever they go (spiritual realm). SDNA is presumably like DNA: there are many different possible changes. There seems to be nothing linking the changes associated with Radiantblades (post-Recreance) and Surgebinding that I am aware of. What seems to give surgebinding is a Nahel Spren bond, which we have word of Brandon that it is not genetically passed on. Am I misunderstanding?

I think we agree that Surgebinding is important and Shardblade unimportant (aside from being an invested object itself). I think it is the genetic component about which we are disagreeing. No sarcasm intended. Fatuousness, verbosity and self-deprecation come naturally, unfortunately. I'm working on it.

Sorry, what? Did I offend somehow? Sadeas carries some invested objects. His SDNA/DNA carries markers that his ancestors carried certain invested objects. I don't believe that he has any more investiture than any other human Rosharan would have five seconds after picking up a Shardblade (assuming that he is not secretly a voidbringer or a Surgebinder). I believe the eye color is genetic, but it doesn't make anyone more magical. I did not mean to be harsh or hurtful. I apologize and beg that you let me know what was hurtful. I thought I was disagreeing with you about investiture being passed genetically based on this statement: "On Scadrial Investiture is passed on genetically. I see no reason why Roshar should be different in this manner." I believe Roshar is very different from Scadrial in this manner. I also don't want to talk about Scadrial in this forum, as some people may not have read the Mistborn books and I don't want to spoilerize them. What am I missing?

You've read the book too. I know nothing. Brandon has said that who gets magic is based on one's actions on Roshar (this is a paraphrase, I can look up the quote if you want). The way one becomes a magic user is different on each of the different planets we've seen. What makes you believe Scadrial should be the same as Roshar? The lightened eyes do seem to be passed genetically, but I am aware of no evidence supporting enhanced investiture or virtue among lighteyes. Given word of the author versus no evidence, I know how I lean. But hey, your way of enjoying the books is and your opinion are no less valid. I just want to share the information I know. You can make your own judgments and laugh at me when the things I say are proven wrong.

Or that Shardblades lighten one's eyes, as it says in the text. So spren could choose virtuous darkeyed people, but the process of becoming a Radiant Shardbearer would cause the irises to lighten. The eyes, in particular seem to link to another realm (spiritual?) which may be why they burn out and maybe where the blades go when not summoned. As I said before, I don't know about knights that don't have Shards. And really, I am going from the text saying that taking up Shards lightens the eyes and maybe 3 examples in the text. Really, it just seems to explain how the Recreance era society, which had darkeyes in positions of authority, became the lighteyed-nobility society we see now.

At the Recreance vision, after they abandoned the Shards, Dalinar accosts one of the former Radiants. He is not described as glowing at that point. Dalinar describes him as : We have not seen all the Radiants ever, so we can't prove that when some of the Radiants are not infusing, they are not darkeyes. Brandon has said that not all knights were armed. Knights without Shards could have easily been darkeyed. So far all the evidence that I have seen points to Radiant Shardbearers as lighteyed, however. Do you have some textual support for the idea that some Shardbearing Radiants are darkeyed?

Mind... blown. So many things. Cities! Betrayal. The Recreance? Spren dying? I think they could have been killed with Shardblades, but maybe being detached from their cognitive selves as Syl was might be enough of an offense. So did the spren see Shallan's latent talent and create her cockamamie plan to steal the Soulcaster in order to get her and Jasnah together? Were the spren working with the ideas in Shallan's mind when she decided to travel to find Jasnah? It would explain her fabulous artistic abilities - that's why she was chosen. Did they help with the events that precipitated the plan - her father's death? Is the spren that is following Shallan different from her bonded cryptic or is that how the cryptic manifests outside of her drawings? What happens in the Cognitive Realm when Shallan takes a memory?

I agree with this. Specifically, I think this quote is about the events of the Tower battle. In this case, then the POV could be Sadeas. Here is the quote: The one who saved Sadeas life could be Dalinar. The one who killed his promises is Eshonai, who was one of those who decided to kill Gavilar, in turn killing Sadeas' promise to serve Gavilar. The raising of the hand could be him showing his true colors by betraying Dalinar. The storm responding could be the battle or it could be Kaladin taking a hand.

The following sections seem interesting together. Jasnah seems to have had an interesting history about which we get only glimpses. When Jasnah kills the four thieves (tWoK chapter 36): Chapter 1, WoR Jasnah loses her poise at the thought of being beholden to a man? Does it seem like being sold into slavery to her? Prologue, WoR Is Amaram one of the men she has a negative history with? Maybe Kaladin is not the only one who has seen his dark side.

I've seen it before. I think it has to do with having two editor windows open, particularly on the same thread. I haven't seen it since I made sure to never have more than one editor window open at a time.

@RadiantNights - this thread is in the Stormlight Archive forum non-WOR section. The local convention is to avoid referencing WoR spoilers, although they can be spoilered out. Spoiler references are fine in the WoR section. I want to gently suggest that references to WoR content be spoilered out or the entire post hidden.

I think the entries are continuous, like the letter in tWoK. Looking at them together: We also know from the blurb: Presumably a catastrophe struck the united Alethi forces. If Navani is writing a journal, they are not all dead. I hold out hope that Dalinar has survived.

To answer that, I look at when it happened. Gavilar's death started concurrently with the death cries. The death quotes I have seen are mostly from 1171 and 1173 in tWoK. Jeseses 1174 is presumably the first month of a year at least 3 after Gavilar's death and less than a year after tWoK. I see three possibilities, only one of which is in the past: Sadeas' betrayal at the Tower. Szeth's assassination attempt. The assault on the Parshendi going wrong. She knew that Dalinar was trying to work w/Sadeas and she could be chiding herself about not having forestalled the Tower betrayal. Of course, it is probably something completely different. Actually, I think it is continuous with the next, which gives hints: This would actually seem to point to a catastrophe in the assault on the Parshendi.

What other secrets are you hiding, Jasnah? Jasnah loses her poise at the thought of being beholden to a man? Does it seem like being sold into slavery to her?

The cracks are concentric around where the hand is. The one hand is glowing much more than the rest of him. Is he setting a lashing trap?

Awesome - a roller coaster ride! Jasnah's spren tests her much more harshly than asking a few questions like Shallan's and Kaladin's do. Some hints at how Soulcasting at a distance could work Wait - Jasnah was within a cautious impulse of having her brother's wife assassinated! How was she a threat? Gavilar and Amaram? Maybe the Ghostbloods had a real reason to take out Amaram. Assassins find Szeth unbearably creepy. A betrayal of the spren by the humans -the Recreance presumably

Welcome! Have an upvote for poking your head above the side of the foxhole and joining our obsession! You have presented a lot more than I feel like addressing at the moment, but I will give you information relevant to one of your questions. I want to apprise you of a resource (assuming that you are not already aware of it), that has quotes from Brandon outside of what is written in the books. Searching for Shardblade (twice, perhaps, due to an oddity in how it works) gets you a set of quotes including the following:

Amen. Make that +23, sir. Unfalsifiable claims? A challenge, methinks (if unfalsifiable means anything like not provably false). I'll try one (please everybody, feel free to play along). Cosmere spoilers that are so vague as to be nearly meaningless: So I claim that this list may falsify the assertions quoted above (the use of "may" making this in turn an unfalsifiable assertion). As for the thread topic, I can't think of much to add to the thoughts already recorded about who the gods might be. I think that the "gods" are gods in the sense of having power over them rather than being willingly worshiped. Jasnah's scholarship and the presence of orange blood in the initial scene with Kalak leads me to believe that they were at previous desolations. It seems to me they could have fought on either side or both. They seem to be magical creatures that are symbiotes with spren. I imagine that they were originally created by either Cultivation or Adonalsium, which could be their gods, but I don't see why they would want to be separated from them or how they achieved that separation recently. Adonalsium is long gone and Cultivation is either all over the planet or in a valley far away. People seem to have been continuously traveling to that valley and never seemed to have come across the Parshendi before. If Odium or his minions could corrupt the spren they bind with, that might make them gods in a sense. Following that thought, where did they come from that they were with Odium or his agents? Another planet? Another realm? The place that the Wandersail tried to go to?

Wow! Just wow! If the Knight started acting poorly, I would think the spren might break the bond. But if they became corrupted together? The glyphs and glowing seem like they would come out wrong, but maybe those too can be faked via lightweaving or by corrupting the armor. The hardest part might be dealing with all the post-Honor spren so they didn't give your emotions away.

Welcome! Have an upvote for joining us! I know nothing, so your guesses are probably better than mine, but here are some possibilities: Other problem Shards (are there any unknown at this point?) Mending broken Shards Putting Humpty-DumptyAdonalsium together again Dealing with whatever inspired the Shattering in the first place Finding some other force of balance or stability Destroying the Shards of Adonalsium totally Dealing w/Hoid These last two don't seem desirable at this point, but I wouldn't put anything past Brandon.

Seems possible. I like the theory. Upvote! I do think the Radiants could have controlled, and would have felt obliged to, the use of Radiantblades from their fallen comrades. Keeping an eye out for lighteyed people and corpses with burned out eyes might have been good enough. If they could detect Radiantblade use, that would make it easier. They may been surrounded by non-Radiant soldiers that were loyal to them also. In your point 2/, I think you mean "original Radiant holder dies while carrying it", but I am not sure. Since we saw the death of the shardbearer Kaladin killed, you are presumably trying to differentiate from that instance. The Shardblades are invested metal. I think it would have taken an act to cause them to turn to dust. The Radiants could well have done that act in all the cases you describe (when Radiants die or at the Recreance), so I don't think this affects the core of the theory. The remaining blades of the 300 abandoned at Feverstone are still not accounted for. Lost/hidden? If Radiants did not live extended lives or pass weapons between generations, something like this might have been needed, as otherwise there would be thousands upon thousands of weapons stored somewhere, presumably weakening Honor.