Knight Oblivion

Honestly, I'm surprised Ala and other Seons around Roshar aren't a bigger deal to the Ghostbloods. They would seem to be the same thing they're seemingly looking for, a way to get bound investiture off-world. Maybe the process that has unbound Ala and other Seons forces their physical realm form to be their only form. Also, now I'm curious if Shallan or someone will accidentally bond Ala.

I mean, me. I've described how it's shown and implied that Navani is worthy. The fact the Sibling accepts her despite a lack of change in the overall situation helps support my position, not yours. Seems pretty clear.

Jasnah has been my favorite, female character in the series since the beginning. Just that obtuse morality that allows her to straight murder three guys just to prove a point to Shallan drew me in. It was crazy, unexpected, and, to me, showed someone that's got issues. Wanting to see more of that and seeing the badassery that followed just gave her the top spot for me.

I'm calling chull dung on this. The Sibling was perfectly willing to not bond Navani and deem her unworthy even with its imminent unmaking/death. What specifically happens is that they fades as Navani tries to persuade them. In her despair, Navani manages to hear then sing Odium's tone with the Anti-Voidlight intent which seemingly pushes back on the process. The Sibling then talks about their lack of Honor's tone which causes Navani to attune it. They both harmonize to join together and recreate the Rhythm of the Tower for the Sibling. This causes the Sibling to remember their purpose of being "the common ground between humans and spren." It's only after all of this, getting the unmaking pushed back, getting their Rhythm restored, and remembering their purpose, all through Navani's actions, that the Sibling accepts her first oath. Finds her implicitly worthy. The whole scene is brief. The Sibling's unmaking is the same throughout. It is clear that they changed their mind as Navani uses what she's learned throughout the previous parts to prove her worth. The book doesn't tell us it, but shows us the change. I think both of you are stuck on what the Sibling tells us instead of what we're shown literally a scene later when Navani proves her worth. There's no coercion, there's no change in the overarching situation. The Sibling was clearly willing to not bond Navani to save themself. Then the Sibling changes their mind after Navani proves she is worthy. There's no coercion.

The revelation of Testament has me confused as to the total of Truths she's sworn and when she first started using Pattern as a blade. I believe she's on six or so, including the easy Truths she told to Testament.

For Navani's path going forward, she has a whole set of oaths to realize. The next two should be something she understands, but the last two are unclear. As per her actions, they seemed reasonably justified and will seemingly result in a mix grab bag of results.

I got the reference to Stonewards in the coalition I've been waiting for. Now what do we think their numbers are? I doubt they're a small group of Radiants. Probably close to or at the amount of bonded Windrunners the coalition has.

Lopen calling out Alethi culture had me cracking up for minutes as I started my read. Where's the lie?

I can't believe that all that was needed to get the Fused into a civil war was giving some of them a Snickers. Can't wait to see how that plays out with the Skybreakers helping Odium's Fused.

Sorry for beating you to the punch @Smye . Thanks though!

Just looked it up on the Facebook post. Here's the quote from a day ago. So it looks like it will be available for those of us that missed out on or where unable contribute to the Kickstarter within the week.

Any news for us non-Kickstarter supporters that want the e-book?

I'd bet Szeth and/or Moash/Vyre will be main interlude characters. Szeth has often gotten extra viewpoints in them and Moash is begging for more.

I'm now very curious as to whether there are Stonewards on the side of the Coalition. We know they have the Windrunners, Edgedancers, Lightweavers, Truthwatchers, Bondsmith (de facto since there's only one we know), Elsecaller (ditto), and rebellious Dustbringers. They've all be mentioned earlier. We also know that the Skybreakers (minus only Szeth apparently) are on the Singers' side and Willshapers aren't really reformed yet. So, are the Stonewards simply non-existent still? It seems like the most plausible explanation for the lack of mention.

So, I've never been much of a fan of Shallan. In fact, the only times I've ever enjoyed reading her viewpoints are when she's interacting with Hoid. As for Kaladin, I've always found him incredibly compelling and interesting. Part of it being due to dealing with depression. Everything I've read, including up to the preview chapters, track with my experiences. The knowledge that something is wrong, that there are things that should be done to manage the "bad thoughts", fighting against those "bad thoughts", etc. are all relatable to me. While I'm lucky enough to have a life that's allowed me to keep the worst of it at bay after breaking out of the darkest of low points, seeing Kaladin's life push him towards recurrent low points triggers an empathetic response. It's this relatability that makes Kaladin my favorite main character ever.

My understanding is that the whole thing is an experiment. Something that could be potentially helpful. Also, obviously it can be scaled up as it's the method the Listeners used to continue to fight the Alethi. The way to scale it up and/or increase its effectiveness seems to revolve around getting to those pure tones of Roshar. Frankly, anything that could be used to circumvent soulcasters with their scarcity and dreadful side effects would be worth pursuing. What even happens to people using soulcasters for grain/meat? Do they become grain/meat? I'm the same way. Totally seemed in character to me.

Yeah, that plea for artifabrians to share their knowledge might help with that though.

We have no explicit indication that Navani proposed wings because she wanted lift. All we have is Kaladin noting that the initial design of the "room" only had wings and that, after uncontrollably moving upward, they were replaced with fins similar to how arrows have fletching. Importantly, in Chapter 9 we see Navani's viewpoint on her "room" which can give some insight as to her aerodynamic knowledge. Notably, she doesn't seem to have a fully developed concept of drag. She specifically mentions that the Windrunners "sculpt the air around themselves" and that the "room" is a sphere with long, tapered ends to "help with airflow". There's no mention of air resistance, drag, turbulent or laminar flow, etc. Just very basic concepts one would learn from dealing with Windrunners. Figuring out a whole new control mechanism to control flight is not something that requires "a little experimentation." Consider that, in the real world, it took many decades to develop even controllable gliding. The foremost pioneer of it, Otto Lilienthal, spent three decades working on it and ultimately died in a crash. The Wright brothers wouldn't achieve controlled, sustained flight for another decade afterwards and took a couple years after that to create the first practical fixed-wing aircraft. As per Navani's thoughts on lift, we really have no idea of it. She's focusing on so much and the only mention of lift is Kaladin's mention of the results of using wings on her vehicle. Honestly, I don't think the Rosharans, Alethi, and Navani have much knowledge with aerodynamics in general. If they did, the Fourth Bridge wouldn't be a big, flying brick. The drag on that thing must be horrendous. The Alethi use arrows, but it's not inconceivable that someone not knowledgeable in aerodynamics would think that wings add stability. Considering their only experience with non-Radiant, self-sustained flight would likely be skyeels, mandra, and chickens, it makes sense that wings could be thought of as adding stability. Specifically, the fact that they replaced a design with only wings to a design with only fins implies that they were looking for stability. We don't have much detail about their design process, outside of the Kaladin's statement, but the fact the change was made implies such. You don't necessarily need lift to worry much about countering Navani's weight. You just need to lash the vehicle upward enough to counter its weight and Navani's. Needing lift would be a less logical approach to initially developing a Surgebinding powered aircraft considering it functions and is controlled largely through Lashings. Though it would be helpful for increasing the efficiency of Stormlight usage. Navani's weight is not trivial when it comes to the force equation in the vertical. The way to deal with it, considering the method of function and control of the aircraft (specifically, lashings), does make it a trivial consideration though. After lashing the whole vehicle to the desired height, you diminish the lashing until it counters both the mass of the vehicle and Navani. Add on some fletching style fins for some passive stability (presumably straight fins instead of angled/helical since Navani isn't spinning around) and you have a magic-powered aircraft.

I kind of like this idea. It seems to fit with how there's various degrees of corruption to the names of the Shardworlds. Whomever gave Ialai the names likely had some kind of obstruction and/or rationalization to corrupt them into a more Rosharan friendly form. Along that same thought, it's plausible that something like "we need to report to the Dakhor" could be misheard and/or rationalized as "we need to report to Thaidakar."

You conceivably can, though it would be more difficult. Forgery uses relatively little investiture compared to soulcasting and you'd probably need a loophole/hack to overcome the issue. Meanwhile soulcasting just needs to have more Stormlight shoved into it.

They probably don't. The alloys for fabrials would likely have, at least, a similar error range for their compositions as Allomantic alloys. So, allowing for variances about a percentage off. I'm not sure if fabrials can be more forgiving though, it would likely depend on the general metallurgical skill present on Roshar. Maybe that's a part of the secrets of the artifabrian guilds hold.

One big question is if the alloy of Brass requires the exact Allomantic alloy composition? It could be comparable to Allomancy in which slight variations alter the efficacy until it's no longer functional or be more exacting considering fabrials seem to be a more precise system/science.

I think there's a solid possibility that the Honorspren don't have the numbers to commit more to the Radiants while still maintaining a viable population to secure their holdings in Shadesmar or restore their population in the event of a Recreance 2: Electric Boogaloo. If I recall correctly, their population was devastated during the first Recreance. They were only able to rebuild their population through the second round of ten made by the Stormfather and learning to reproduce themselves. We don't really know what their total numbers are outside of the ones we saw on their ship and the fifty-ish that have bonded.

All interesting and well-researched. The main issue is that we have some confirmation in ch. 6 of RoW that the other Truthwatchers that have joined the coalition use Illumination like Shallan does. Obviously, Renarin is the odd one out that's using Illumination substantially differently from the norm with regards to both the Radiant orders that use it as well as that Fused we saw using it in Oathbringer.

It hit me like the whole Amber Heard audio hit me, so I'm fine with calling it abuse since it is. It's also how I talked about it to my brother when we were discussing the prologue. My only regret is that I can't upvote you more for this post.