Slaybalj

I dont think the diagram ever mentions a bridgeman radiant. It just mentions that one way to find radiants is to look for people who just dont seem to die when they should....taravangion concludes there must be a radiant among the bridgemen because the story of the bridgemen saving dalinar and becoming dalinars bodyguards is so extraordinary,

I also believe that on the day he wrote it he could not concieve of not being brilliant enough to keep it up to date.

Thing is, taravangion is driving towards a successful outcome based on a diagram that doesnt know if dalinar will be a warleader or a peacemaker, and the probability of success of the diagram is different from the probability of success of the diagram given dalinar is a peacemaker. If you assume taravanion wants to keep the diagram as stable as possible and that radiants add instability then the fact that dalinar is not only a peacemaker ( which taravangion wanted to avaoid) but also a bondsmith then we are now on a much more chaotic future path... Even small changes can now have large effects and actions that might have led to stability or improvement for warleader dalinar could lead to instability or negative outcomes for peacemaker dalinar.

Yes, he knows its degrading, but he doesnt know by how much and all it takes is a small number of low probability events with massively variable outcomes to shift things well outside 'normal' For instance, lets assume the diagram said to kill the leader of Azir then continue to kill whoever is elected to replace him repeatedly and that the intention was for azir to end up exactly as it did..... Noone wants to rule and azir is either left with no ruler ( allowing taravangion to take over directly) or ends up with a ruler that can be easily puppeted. I cannot imagine the diagram gave very high odds that the ruler would end up being a young thief who will (probably) be heavily influenced by Lift. Can the diagram now predict anything related to azir? And how will this affect anything else lift, gawx, or azir might influence? If the diagram is pure logic and probability, taravangion could not have predicted where the edgedance would show up, that it would be lift, and that she would basically fubar his plans for azir.... Otoh, if you assume he is given the capacity required for the days events, then the diagram may well be logic, but the Nightwatcher understood where lift would appear and that taravangion was able to write the diagram so he could (for instance) trigger the azir succession and put gawyx and lift in the palace at the appropriate time to ensure the diagram cannot be followed. I may be overthinking this....the correct solution might be to assume there a little fridge logic in the whole taravangion/diagram arc and let it slide. Side note: i expect from the comments related to Hoid the diagram noticed that wherever he pops up, the chances of greater success increase, i bet he never leads to poorer outcomes...

Now there's another interesting thought.... If he only gets as much capacity he needs on a given day, then that means the day he wrote the diagram was the ideal day to lay out 'the plan' and it also implies that after the diagram there were likely days when he needed to be dimwitted enough to make mistakes.... That is't not necessarily the diagram itself that will lead to the best possible solution, but that screwing up while attempting to follow it will...? That, of course, assumes that his intelligence is Not random.

The problem is even if he is aiming towards a 90% chance of sucess, he has no way of predicting whether current events have already pushed the end result outside that window of success. The diagram may have had a 90% chance of success on the day it was written, but that chanc eof success is probably getting smaller and smaller and smaller bcause people keep doing things Taravangion cannot control. And if only 4000 people would have been saved in that outcome, then now following it just means low probability of success and barely enough people to survive extinction. Assuming he wrote the diagram while understanding probabilities of various events occuring and how they would affect the future his plan only works if you can continuously update the diagram.

@Rakei - OK, I think you might have convinced me....however, there is still a huge problem in my mind with this..... suppose at his most brilliant, Taravanion was able to see all the branching possibilities and made plans to ensure the greatest likelihood of the greatest number of people were to survive.. The problem is, probabilistic systems change constantly and the diagram would have been out of date the day after it was written.... maybe if he were always this brilliant he might be able to adapt his plans ( he clearly wants to do this) but he's basically predicting next week's weather based on what the weather did three weeks ago and taking no account for what the weather is currently doing. In this case, his hit list wouldn't just be for people who aren't following his plan, it HAS to be pruning people and events who can interject unpredictability to the system. The more variability it adds to the system, the more it must be avoided. Most likely this would include any Knights Radiant. It's not that he knows they're going to do something he won't like, it's that he DOESN'T know what they're going to do! In all likelihood the Diagram is driving towards disaster. Without variability, everything is inching closer and closer to zero....

Hmm.... Thinking this through here..... As you mentioned, Taravangions other two 'smart' ideas are pretty terrible, which does indicate that the diagram solution is just as awful... One thing wierd about both of those is that they only count as good ideas if you completely neglect to consider the human reaction to enforcing them. It doesnt take much to realize how people would react.... Thats not just compassion and empathy...thats an understanding of how people respond to external pressures. ( i actually have issue with thinking that a smart person with no compassion could not realize this.. But hey, we will go with it) The diagram on the other hand seems to be based heavily on an understanding of how people will react. He creates power vacumns specifically to sow as much chaos as possible and outlines exactly what he must do to appear as a benevolent savior. If 'smart' travangion cannot realize the problems with enforcing eugenics and average taravangion realizes the problems with it, how come super smart Taravangion understands human reactions? Personally, while i sort of like the idea of the diagram being totally logic, i just dont see how that is possible. Far too much of it would seem to accurately predict systems i would describe as stochastic. Heck, he predicts exactly how many armies would converge on jah keved at once and it only off by 1 (. 6 vs 7, iirc). How is that even possible several years in advance? What if someone falls off a cliff a year early, or bad weather delays someones plans, what if a ship sinks, what is someone you expected to be a major player gets strangled by his daughter, what if someone you decided was a nobody didnt get strangled by his daughter and winds up as a major player? I actually wonder if the 'capacity' taravangion asked for actually comes from his 'dumb' days... I dont see how this is possible, and i guess i dont believe it, but part of me would like to think he mixed up his boon and his bane and is focusing on the wrong one. edit:spelling

The Tor WoR reread for each chapter includes a discussion of theories why each of the heralds is included in the chapter symbology.

Now that you said that i am pretty sure you were my source for thinking it wasnt going to be in book 3.

I have a first print paperback copy of game of thrones sitting on my bookshelf... I loved it when i first read it, reread it a half dozen times, bought the next three hardback,...and realized after 21 years i just no longer care. I gave my hardbacks to the local library and only kept GoT as a reminder to not get that emotionally invested in an incomplete book series again... ( i failed with SA ). I still think the first book is good, but the series got off track.

I thought i read sanderson stating that while a stormlight archive novella may come out, it would probably not be jasnah's adventure in shadesmar... And from a pacing standpoint, it might not even make sense to publish beofre the third book... It might spoil some stuff he wants to reveal in another manner. I think she was doing something immensely important, but it might be able to be glossed over for the next three books to keep the arc on track. Given the only jasnah pov we have is the prelude to WoR, i think i expect that jasnah will reappear in book 3, but as a character in someone elses pov or, if she doesnt reconnect with a pov character, as an interlude character. I will be disappointed if she doesnt show up at all in book 3... She is easily my favorite character, but i dont want to sacrifice the whole of the series just to see more of her sooner.

Yeah... I quite enjoyed that... I gather sanderson has actually written out the story...but has indicated it will not be part of the next book, right? Thus, i suspect that it will remain unpublished until after the front five books are done... And perhaps not until jasnah's book? As anxious as i am to read it, i think i have to agree that if its not relevant to the current story arc, including it would just create the sort of horrible sprawl that seems so common in fantasy.

Agreed. I really hope we eventually get the story about what happened there...

heh... though informing Lift that Wyndle can become a shardblade sounds way too practical to be something Jasnah would talk about. She never even trained Shallan to inhale stormlight or mention the ability to use stormlight to heal..... practical application of abilities comes _after_ a full and exhaustive understanding of theory.

Assuming the theory about secondary spren becoming shardplate (windspren for Kaladin and creationspren for Shallan), I don't think we've seen any potential plate-spren around Jasnah, have we?

The first fantasy story I read that made me realize a well written story could 'ruin' other genre books was Memory,Sorrow, and Thorn by Tad Williams. i got a LOT more selective about epic fantasy after that. To be fair, it's over 20 years old now and I originally read it when I was 15 so I don't have a good idea of how it would hold up without the nostalgia factor. after feeling burned by Game of Thrones and disappointed in WoT, I am surprised I even picked up Way of Kings back in 2014.... but I am sooo glad I did.

even more amusing in my opinion would be Jasnah meeting Lift, who seems to exemplify the following quote.... “Ignorance is hardly unusual, Miss Davar. The longer I live, the more I come to realize that it is the natural state of the human mind. There are many who will strive to defend its sanctity and then expect you to be impressed with their efforts" For her part, i expect lift would find Jasnah even more tiresome than Wyndle's explanations.

But jasnah has no reason to suspect shallan has said more than one, maybe two oaths given she was one practically there when pattern was pulled into the physical realm. Also, the words of radiance epigraph for chapter 57 indicates that lightweavers have an odd oath progression. Otoh, i bet jasnah was training shallan in a manner more appropriate to an elsecaller than a lightweaver.

I thought it was kaladin from when he drove the carriage to the sideshow

I thought there was a WoB that stated most orders require 3 oaths to get manifest a blade. My suspicion is that Jasnah made a significant amount of progress in shadesmar though, so she probably only just got it. It is plausible however that jasnah had a shardblade before shadesmar, but never drew it simply because she had no way to explain away why she had one, especially one that was so different from other blades. It also would have been near impossible to train in swordsmanship without drawing unwanted attention. ( i dont believe this is the case.... I bet she had to go to shadesmar to find her oaths) I have a hard time imagining a fight between kaladin and jasnah because it seems so out of character for jasnah to let it get to a physical fight with him.... If it were me though... Hmm.. I would try yanking him partway to shadesmar and use the beads to keep him off balance, figuratively and literally? As for kaladin and jasnah meeting..... I wondered if that town she is a week away from is Hearthstone. I cant decide if that would be cool or too convenient.

I am curious why Jasnah doesn't glow when soulcasting. Even when transforming the giant boulder in Kharbranth, there is nothing to indicate anything out of the ordinary and since Shallan is taking Memories of her soulcasting whenever she sees it, I can't help but think if there was even the smallest stormlight leaking it would have shown up in Shallan's pictures. Obviously Jasnah is using the gems in the 'fabrial' to hold the stormlight she needs, but does she transfer it directly from the gems to the object being transformed or does she have to inhale it and transfer it personally? and if so, did she just train herself to do so at a rate so small it's unobservable?

A lot of the instrumental music from Loreena McKennitt reminds me of Stormlight Archive. In particular her rendition of 'the two trees' by Yeats... the lyrics also remind me of Lin Davar and Kaladin (when he's struggling with his oaths) Gaze no more in the bitter glass The demons, with their subtle guile, Lift up before us when they pass, Or only gaze a little while; For there a fatal image grows That the stormy night receives, Roots half hidden under snows, Broken boughs and blackened leaves. For all things turn to barrenness In the dim glass the demons hold, The glass of outer weariness, Made when God slept in times of old.

You mean, like these? https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Rules_of_Civility_and_Decent_Behaviour_in_Company_and_Conversation18th century etiquette, 'rules of civility and decent behavior in company and conversation' as transcribed by george washington.....

Also, as the sister to a king, jasnah does not get much true privacy to practice. Transportation would be darn difficult to practice without rumors starting. I suspect another problem for her was that the heirocracy supressed all the information she needs ( or feels that she needs) to understand what she is doing.