Erklitt

2 hours ago, Walter The Moral said:

Maybe they correspond to letters in the steel alphabet?

That sounded like a good idea! I had never heard of the steel alphabet, but found it on the coppermind. Sadly, the result is just as cryptic:
Y B I M W
L S G Z R

I'm rereading TLM and wondering about the graphic that's under each 'Part X' title. Has there been any discussion of this? If there has been I couldn't find it. 

There are two rows of metal/number symbols. Of course those could be random, just for decoration, but I find that hard to believe. Yet I cannot think of any meaningful interprtetation. 

In numbers it's:
14  1 3 11 13  
 5 16 9 15  6

The metals are:
nicrosil       iron           tin           gold     chromium
  zinc     duralumin cadmium aluminum  brass

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

I tremble to suggest this, and maybe someone can help me out with a satisfying answer. Here's my problem:

Ryan sabotaged Ulric's beacon. When John meets Ryan, they guess that it still worked in part since John got through, though somewhere unexpected. And Ulric somehow could trace where he had landed. Then it turns out Ulric's beacon really doesn't work anymore, and it was Logna who 'fetched' John. Nothing to do with Ulric's beacon. 

So, how did Ulric know that someone had landed in Stenford? 

13 minutes ago, Amira said:

Although now Kaladin is conspiring to commit murder, so do I still want to hear about him?

Yes, you definitely do! 

1 hour ago, Amira said:

My rep says I'm a forger. I wonder what I'm forging. What book is this from?

35 minutes ago, Treamayne said:

The Emperor's Soul. A one-story Novella set on the same world as Elantris - but not connected.

Published in 'Arcanum Unbounded'. And what you're forging is (slight spoiler, but something you find out pretty much at the beginning of the story, so it's really more of a teaser than a spoiler):

1 hour ago, Amira said:

Why did Shallan want to stay outside till the very last second before the storm hit?

The way I take it, that's just showing how her personality tends to extremes. I'm not aware of any deeper meaning to it.

19 hours ago, Treamayne said:

I believe Amara is starting with Stormlight Archive, so she would not have yet read the story where we see Zahel under a different name (but it will be interesting to see if she picks him out when she does read that work)

I don't think it's a spoiler to mention what story that is, but to be in the safe side...

20 hours ago, Amira said:

"Red carpet, before it was white..." where was that from? I can't remember.

Check out the chapter titles of part 1.

I don't think it's either of the two possibilities. I don't remember where Malata was at that moment, but guess she probably was there and represented the Dustbringers. She definitely is the only one whom Dalinar would recognize as a Dustbringer at that time. We're seeing this scene through his eyes, and he sees 9 orders represented.

I can't point to any specific WoB right now, but I remember that on several occasions he said something to the effect that there is a limit to how long it is acceptable to misdirect your readers on any given subject. E.g. he promised after WoR that we would soon know whether the man entering Kholinar in that epilogue was really Taln, and he kept that promise in OB. 

By that reasoning alone, Shallan is definitely out as a secret Dustbringer. She's an experienced Lightweaver by now and bonded to a cryptic who is one of the main characters. Even if Chana was really somehow hiding inside Shallan, that wouldn't change the fact that Shallan herself is a Lightweaver, I just don't see BS suddenly coming around the corner with: 'I fooled you all about her real nature'.  

And I would claim almost the same for Ash really being Chana, though a little more tentativly. But we see her talking about how her father was just killed, she destroys Shallash images not Chana images, and all in all is too well established as herself by now in my opinion for BS to pull such a trick.

17 minutes ago, StormingTexan said:

There has been discussion I believe that Shalash will become a Dustbringer which makes since with her destroying art and you know the nickname Ash.  

I do think it's possible that Ash will become a dustbringer and is the 'real' representative on Honor's side, though Dalinar doesn't know it.

I couldn't find that rather old thread about who might be the kandra worldhopper on Roshar. But after all sorts of important people had been suggested, someone said: 'probably someone unimportant like the chouta seller'.

Kudos, whoever you are: you were probably right! 

3 minutes ago, robardin said:

but if so, why sixteen separate vials?

The number 16 certainly is suspicious. But apart from that, I consider it a possibility that 15 of them contain the16 basic metals (or fifteen? would aluminum cancel the others? Can't remember just now...) and the last one contains atium in addition.

Just saw that @Dl206 is of the same opinion:

2 minutes ago, Dl206 said:

Each vial has all the metals, (last one has atium) but the number 16 is more symbolic to us. Plus 16 viles is a good number if youre heading out on a massive battle against unknown foes. 

In addition, 16 might just be a red herring for us so that we're not entirely sure even now whether he's mistborn.

6 minutes ago, Dl206 said:

Another cool thing is that he may be a full feruchemist now, instead of a full mistborn. 

Cool yes, but why would he need metal flasks then instead of armbands?

At first I thought it might be Lessie, but then I realized (after enlarging the picture) that she's wearing spectacles. So now my guess is Ranette, she uses magnifying spectacles in one scene. Otherwise, I think both women's description would fit.

Thanks @Treamayne and @Greywatch. The problem was not about the mechanics of quoting per se, but that the quotes always ended up in a new post, even when I had the cursor inside the post I tried to edit. Found a way now though: cutting it out of the new post and inserting it in the one I'm editing.

There's a lot to look forward to with Rysn, the Novella that's set between SA3 and SA4 ('Dawnshard') is about her. Not to mention some more very interesting interludes. It's worthwhile to keep the characters connected to her story (including pets!) in memory. 

This is somewhat of a spoiler but not a very big one I think, and a very interesting thing about Rysn, so decide whether you want to see it (it reveals one aspect of Rysn's future): 

Sorry about the double post, I know it's not supposed to be done, but I didn't manage to add quotes to my previous post. If that's possible and some admin sees this and can tell me how it's done, it will be appreciated!
 

21 hours ago, Amira said:

And was that hanging Aimian guy the same guy who was cataloging spren?

Good catch!!

21 hours ago, Amira said:

I wonder why Rysn has such horrible opinions of the Aimian.

Information on Aimians will be forthcoming VERY SLOWLY, and most of them in WOBs. To be on the safe side, I'll spoiler the rest of this, but you asked, and I think there are no serious spoilers here.

Take with a grain of salt: 

1. Pattern

We're seeing a spren reawakening - it's only fair that we should see one becoming a deadeye. And he's known it all along, hasn't he? 

How - Shallan subconsciously finds her next truth, and simply is not able to admit it, it's too horrible*. So she does 'it' all over again.

* SA5 prologue wide-spread theory spoiler

2. This next one contains Mistborn spoilers:

3. Hoid

Design drives him to desperation, so he finally gets tired of life. Again: overdue, after all those millennia, and with Design being what she is. I mean, it's quite inescapable at this point?!
Also, he's believed to be unkillable, and we're owed some REAL surprises now and then.

How - He steals Nightblood and unsheathes it. It takes Jasnah entering Shadesmar to identify the body...

==============================================================================

On a more serious note:

Adolin is NOT going to die.

His arc with Maya is too unique and important. And while we know spren react differently to the deaths of their knights, we know what it did to Syl - and seriously: you think a barely reawakened spren would be less devastated? Brandon simply can't do that to her.

21 hours ago, Kolten said:

Have we ever seen if spren behave differently when bonded to different people? I wonder if the human involved in the bonding can effect the personality of the spren in some ways.

The closest to this we have seen would be Design, taken up by Hoid after Elhokar's death. It makes me wonder: should we hope for Elhokar's influence to be quickly 'overridden' by Hoid's, or should we be terrified of the prospect? 

First of all: welcome, @Elsecalling…!

5 hours ago, BinarySecond said:

On the Stormfather he is a mix of the original Stormfather and Tanavast's Cognitive Shadow.

Relevant WOB!

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/175/#e8439

So he's got a little bit of Tanavast's personality thrown in there as well as the power of Honour.

That was just a mix-up of shard and vessel. The WOB states that 'the Stormfather is kind of Honor's Cognitive Shadow'.

Otherwise, this thread has me a little confused - some posts don't fit my previous understanding:

6 hours ago, That1Cellist said:

Yes, the Stormfather is a splinter of honor. I believe all spren are splinters of honor, but have Cultivation mixed in as well. At the very least, yes, spren are splinters of honor.

Both the Stormfather and honor spren including Syl existed long before the splintering. So how they can be splinters of Honor? Being made of Honor (and Cultivation) is something different than being splinters, I would think. Or is the word 'splinter' used in two different senses here? One being a synonym for 'sliver (of divinity)' as Syl sometimes puts it, the other the broken pieces of the shard after splintering?

5 hours ago, Rg2045 said:

Should be noted that shards can purposefully splinter themselves to create spren.

I thought spren only exist on and are typical for Roshar? And what reason would a shard have to create spren anyway, and at the cost of its own destruction to boot? 

I thought this was an interesting theory, although I agree with

22 hours ago, alder24 said:

I personaly don't like the idea of everyone being suddenly offsprings Heralds as its difficult for CS to have kids, Chana is enough, and adding more is unnecessary.

Still, you're right that something interesting is going on with Hesina. But it's not this. I just searched WoBs for Hesina, and found two more relevant ones. I guess the first one also puts an end to the biological interpretation of 'child of Tanavast' (pity - I liked that one).   
 

Quote

AlwaysTheNextOne

Does Kaladin have a mixed heritage. Like maybe Yolish and Rosharan?

Brandon Sanderson

One thing I wanted to be very careful about in writing the Stormlight books is to stray away from people needing some kind of past or heritage to be special—it's okay for this to be for some characters, but it becomes a crutch. So your answer is no, he doesn't have much secret to his heritage. (Though his mother grew up wealthy for a darkeyes, and that's a little odd.)

Footnote: Brandon has mentioned Hesina's comparatively wealthier background several times, including mentioning that one of her parents are not darkeyed.
General Reddit 2020 (Dec. 16, 2020)

Quote

Dragon13

Hesina received a letter from her family talking about new fabrials. Is she related perhaps to someone like Navani?

Brandon Sanderson

See, there's too much wiggle room in that. Yes. But. Not probably as closely as your question is implying.

Skyward Chicago signing (Nov. 16, 2018)

Since I still have them open, I might as well add this one that @Yumiya has alluded to in the OP:

Quote

lightningrani

Can you tell me anything about Kaladin's maternal grandparents?

Brandon Sanderson

Let's just say that his mother [Hesina]--you're asking a very astute question--gave up more than most people gave up in that city to go be what she became. She's definitely fallen in social standing since her childhood. She took a hit.

Firefight Seattle UBooks signing (Jan. 6, 2015)

I wonder: could it have been Hoid who brought Nightblood to Roshar?

• He might be considered a criminal on many worlds for many reasons.
• He's important enough cosmere-wise to be hunted through worlds. 
• He keeps a low profile on Roshar because Rayse would kill him, so Azure probably has no way of knowing he's near Vasher and Adolin's and Kaladin's home.
• He was on Nalthis when Vasher still had NB and is now on Roshar. He could somehow have acquired NB on Nalthis and have it with him on his journey to Roshar. And he could have passed through Lasting Integrity with it on the way.
• He has some knowledge of where he has to be at any given time, maybe sometimes also what he needs to bring along?

I don't think however that he was Taravangian's source. 

Edit: Should have searched WOBs before writing this. My bad!

Quote

Questioner

What would happen if Hoid held Nightblood?

Brandon Sanderson

Uh, Hoid would not do that. Hoid would stay very far away.

Stormlightning

Not even hold it??

Brandon Sanderson

He would stay really far away. There are very few things in the Cosmere that Hoid is afraid of, and Nightblood is one of them.

Stormlightning

I thought he'd be afraid of the blade end.

Brandon Sanderson

So let's just say if very, very, very few things in the Cosmere had a chance of destroying you, you wouldn't even pick one up. You'd try to be in a different room entirely.

R'Shara and Sunbird and JoyBlu

*Whispering about Nightblood being able to destroy Hoid*

Brandon Sanderson

I didn't say, I said theoretically. I said "had a chance of", I did not confirm. Hoid doesn't know. But there's a chance, and so he is not going to risk that.

On 6/6/2022 at 10:32 PM, Returned said:

why bond a spren just to turn around a short time later and lose it, along with the power it granted?

Generally I would agree but ... this is Design we're talking about.  

Thanks, @Frustration. I'm glad there are still people who realize that not every relationship involving strong emotions must be sexual in nature. That would be a poor world indeed.

4 hours ago, Veez said:

I'm flattered!

No need, that's a very insightful theory! And by the way, welcome to the shard!

On 5/8/2022 at 4:31 AM, Frustration said:

Um, no. Gavilar specifically mentions that old herald drawings had the scar.

My bad, I didn't remember this. So, as far as we go with this theory, it's probably the gender change.

But several things: e.g. your WoB, and another about it being a special and difficult process for heralds to procreate, but especially the timeline (Mother dying in that very month - I mean: what are the odds??) got me thinking some more. What if Mother actually was the herald, but in order to have children they had to do things that would render the partner similar to the herald in some respects? With one of the side effects being they were (at least almost) equally hard to kill, and them 'inheriting' some character traits, including herald madness? 

I realize this is quite a stretch, but if Brandon is really going to dig into all those 'herald body mechanics' 'pretty deeply', this could be some nice foreshadowing.

I agree with those that don't want to see Kaladin suffering even more. And after his big breakthrough in RoW I hope and believe we'll see a triumphant Kaladin for most of SA5, before he fades into the background for SA6-10. Since Brandon has (IIRC) promised some level of closure after SA5, I can't imagine him leaving our favorite character to suffering at the end of it.

However, I can well imagine the question coming up at some point in time and him offering it, maybe in connection with his fifth ideal. Maybe it will even happen for a short time, but my guess is if it does, it will be resolved and a better solution found before the end of SA5.

You have me fascinated! The longer I think about it, the more possible - even likely! - it seems to me. And there I was until now practically sure about the Mother = Chana theory. By now, I'm almost 50/50.

As @Anomander Rake says, especially the blackbane and aluminum points are very valid; I wondered about both during a recent reread, without ever getting near to any specific theory about them.

Also, the 'obedient' topic: I once started writing a post about Lin's constant complaints that no one obeyed him, trying to say it strengthened the Mother = Chana theory, but gave up when I realized all that happened after Mother's death, so it didn't really fit.

And about 'brave': Lin detests his sons - except Helaran - for their lack of bravery in standing up to his dictatorship. Typical mad herald inversion of a virtue?

As for gender, I think both are possible: Chana never having been a woman or a gender change.

For Chana never having been a woman:

I hold to the theory that in SA5 prologue it's a 'Stormfaker' rather than the Stormfather for most of the time. He drives Gavilar in the direction of the Sons of Honor, meaning he would want to strengthen Vorin orthodoxy like '5/5', and for that reason not contradicting Gavilar. 

And maybe in the vision the Stormfather was lying by omission, but then maybe in the context this misapprehension just wasn't important enough to point out. This explicit mention of something we seem to know by heart really could be intentional misdirection by Brandon.  

For a gender change:
@Frustration 's WOB strengthens the theory in my opinion. If they just always automatically got their original bodies back, why would this process become important later on? There has to be more to that, and part of that could be that somehow an originally female Chana woke up in a male body for the last desolation. 

About the herald who died on the day of Gavilar's death: there's that theory about Jasnah's hired assassin being Vedel, and we never hear about her again. Maybe she found her match on that night? I admit that's a stretch. But not impossible. She's the only one left beside Chana who's not accounted for by at least a WoB if not in the books.

And one more point in favor: the Mother = Chana theory has, among other valid points, stated that it explains why Shallan's familiy was the center of so much attention: spren, Skybreakers and Ghostbloods. But at least the Ghostblood attention happened years after Mother's death, and Skybreaker and spren attention also didn't cease after it. 

On 5/6/2022 at 6:20 PM, Frustration said:

Still, nothing about the Heralds has been wrong yet, even Nale's scar is still remembered.

By the Shin. We haven't seen their viewpoints apart from Szeth so far, and IIRC Szeth has never seen Shallan. Jasnah has Wit's drawings, but she's secretive, not showing her cards. No reason to believe she'd make obvious discrepancies to tradition public. Also, as has been mentioned against the Mother = Chana theory, there's no hint Jasnah recognized Shallan's likeness in Chana, though of course that could also be because of this secretiveness.

All in all, I think this theory has a surprising lot going for it, even though it's still crackpot !

5 hours ago, Quantus said:

[...] or if the timeline fits.

According to some, the timeline fits exactly, as both events happen in the same month of the same year (no idea how they found that out).

Further evidence fitting with that theory (thanks to many other posters!)

- Chana has red hair (from official pictures as well as SA5 prologue), as had Shallan's mother 
- It would explain why the name of Shallan's mother was never mentioned; it would have given too much away
- Given various WOB's, we've seen pretty much every herald at some time or other, and Chana and Vedel are the only ones about whom we're not sure where that was. There's a theory the assassin hired by Jasnah in SA2 prologue might be Vedel (healing turned on it's head my madness)
- If Shallan knew her mother was a herald, that would explain what 'truth' could be even worse than what we already know: she didn't just kill her mother, she sent a herald to Braize who would probably break soon, starting a desolation. Quote from WoR (from memory, maybe not exact): 'The world ended, and Shallan was to blame'.