robardin

He was headed down this path when he gave Shen - before he learned he had a name of his own, Rlain - a spear. Which in turn was long after Kaladin and the rest of Bridge Four insisted he get the Bridge Four tattoo, when the tattooist objected to doing so for a parshman.

Not for a ten-heartbeats type of deadspren Blade, but an insta-summon livespren Blade that you could form into a smaller shape (like a dagger or a star-shaped shuriken), throw a distance, and then immediately re-summon to hand to throw again, could be a pretty deadly technique.

It'll be like in that video by Madonna for "Papa Don't Preach" that ends in a hug. "But I've made up my mind, I'm keepin' my Radiant"

No worries. She'll just imagine up a version of Shallan Radiant who can keep track of them all. If that's too difficult, she can first imagine a version of herself capable of imagining it. Bootstrapping FTW!

Dealerform is used to play Twenty-One; Shuffle, cut, and distribute the cards. Counting cards must not be done: Lest the House lose its advantage of odds.

So, a few observations: - Confirmed as many of us already suspected, the Everstorm is "just" releasing Listeners from slaveform; they'd have to consciously choose to bond the right (wrong?) spren to change to warform or stormform or whatever else. - Also (to me) confirms that it wasn't Parshendi at the other end of the Azir spanreed conversation Dalinar had earlier. They didn't "learn" all that well in slaveform. - As I predicted, Adolin is TERRIBLE at dissembling, or keeping secrets. "So, uh, I think the murders were done by two different people." So much for taking advantage of a Deus Ex Machina cover story for his killing of Sadeas.

IT IS FORBIDDEN

If the list is of people the Aimian in question has observed sprenbonding, Surgebinding, and Radiance, where are Jasnah and Lift? (The latter of which has directly interacted with at least one Aimian, in Arclo). The "obvious" interpretations, in order of obviousness: The King, broken by war, he seeks the past - Dalinar The Captain, broken by loss - Kaladin The Spy, broken by cruelty - Shallan The Stonewalker, broken by oaths - Szeth (who's now a Skybreaker in training) The Traitor, broken by ambition - ??? Moash fits the description of The Traitor, even to himself ("he was a traitor, twice over"). Though his immediate motivation for his betrayals was more vengeance than ambition, he has definitely exhibted a lot of ambition all along, and you could interpret his defiance of Kaladin's repeated and direct orders to break off with Graves' plotting, and comment of "I guess I wouldn't want it any other way" before moving to strike Kaladin down, as "ambition" to be at Kaladin's level of command. Not sure what Order's spren he'd attract, though. Holy crap. Time to read Ch 13-15!

Maybe for Szeth (if for some reason, the Shin didn't preserve knowledge about the Honorblades not needing ten heartbeats), but surely Nalan would have exhibited the ability to summon his Blade instantly, yet it seems he needs ten heartbeats as well. (Though it's not certain - maybe he just likes to monologue or pause dramatically for about ten seconds when he's about to kill someone.)

I was skim-rereading Alloy of Law recently and was just about to start a thread asking/discussing Whatever Happened To Those Kidnapped Misting Women. In AoL Wax concludes from them all being female and Allomancers that they were being used to try to "breed back" to a full Mistborn, something the Set was interested in doing. But we see in the next few "Era 2" books that the Set was already fairly knowledgeable about hemalurgy, so it could be they were getting spiked for their powers. I had also wondered how they got so many Bloodmaker spikes, since Ferrings are fairly rare and individually known by the small Terris community, and not a whole lot of them had gone missing; in Shadows of Self, the Steelrunner that got killed and spiked for her Steelrunning to give to Bleeder was a missing persons case that Wax was already looking into, aside from investigating The Set's activity. Only about 1/16 of all Ferrings would be Bloodmakers, yet at least three members of the Set are seen to be able to use "unencrypted goldminds" - Telsin, Suit, and that woman at the party where Wayne first gets the blank goldmind, for starters. Then I realized, if tapping gold can heal damage to the Spiritweb as from getting hemalurgically spiked, then a gold/gold compounding Twinborn like Miles Hundredlives would be a perfect source of spike generation - spike him, let him heal, and spike him again! Though there would seem to be some kind of a recursive problem in that Miles would need his Bloodmaker ability to heal from having his Bloodmaking spiked out of him, isn't Brandon saying it was possible?

Hmm. Didn't Szeth need ten heartbeats to summon his Honorblade? And so did Darkness/Nale, apparently, since he chats for a bit with Ym and with Lift before his Blade appears, wet with condensation, and "dropping" rather than "appearing" into his hand. So whatever bond is needed betwen Honorblade and wielder is akin to a "dead" sprenblade, that needs "reviving" each time. (Maybe because Honor was killed/Spilntered.)

Wow, I don't check on the 17th Shard for 18 hours and THIS happens. Very impressive, guys! How do we know the POV for what's on the back of the book is an Aimian?

Hmm. Elsewhere he has used "Lightweaver" to mean someone using the Surge of Illumination (that is, referring to it as "Lightweaving"), so maybe this is about Renarin or another Truthwatcher, versus an actual, Cryptic-bonded LW. Otherwise... Very interesting....

Whaaat? Also, yes, I would think King Taravangian (how dare you call him "Vargo") is quite possibly a Bondsmith (You must become king. Of everthing. We must discuss the nature of kingship...) except that we have POVs from him and there has been no interaction with a spren; this even though the Diagram, and possibly what he's learned from the works in the Palanaeum before or after That Beautiful Day of Clarity, shows that he knows a lot about Surgebinding, the Heralds, progressing in the Nahel bond, the Everstorm (the Diagram has a countdown of highstorm dates leading up to it), and even the number, names, and effects of the Unmade. No spren chitchatting... Yet.

I don't think that would fit the nature of the communication. First, few Listeners knew Alethi at all, and the style was that distinctly Azish style of Fogspeak that would be difficult to mimic on short notice without practice or training; and second, the whole oops-we-said-too-much backtracking they did wouldn't fit that either. Yes, you could construct a plausible scenario like how these were the Azish's own parshmen slaves made intelligent that were on the other end of the spanreed somehow, who would've had many years to absorb their language patterns, and the "oopsie" was an intentional slip meant as a ruse. But I think that'd be over-investing in that angle, versus the simpler plot-building rationale that we're about to see What's Going On In Azir with a Lift POV that results in absorbing Gawx's full and personal attention - since the last POV we had of her in Edgedancer had her heading that way. I mean, we haven't seen any evidence of secret cabals of humans working with Voidbringers, especially when VBs have only reappeared at all in the past two weeks or so!

I agree, the tenor of the Azish Spanreed Correspondence didn't sound like Gawx - it's a "representative". The question is, was that due to: (A) A usurpation of power (deliberate sidestepping of Gawx) (B) Gawx explicitly having delegated the discussion with Dalinar, because He Couldn't Be Bothered (C) A substitution out of necessity (Gawx was Seriously Indisposed or Busy Doing Something Else At The Last Minute) where the viziers didn't want to admit what was up with Gawx to a foreign leader Option A doesn't seem right; from what we saw in Edgedancer, at least, it seems Gawx really is respected as the Prime Aqasix and not just a figurehead (indeed, he had always been Prime...). And while a "freeze out" of Gawx is imaginable, if they didn't start out that way from Day One, it hasn't been long enough (I think) for them to start doing this sort of thing. It'd start with some core group browbeating Gawx more and more with "let us handle this", and Gawx would have a second group of favor seekers pushing him to push back (or act) against them ("be your own man - and think about THIS angle we've got while you're being your own man"). Option B doesn't seem right, either, also from what we saw in Edgedancer, Gawx is actually doing ruling type stuff as Prime and not just feasting while his advisors do the administrating. So if it's Option C, what would be more important or more distracting to Gawx than keeping a spanreed appointment to talk to Dalinar? Maybe we'll find out when a Lift POV is Chapter 13 next week?! Man, Sanderson's books are NOT meant to be read serially! -- Or perhaps, they are. I'm finally gaining insight into how it felt to read stuff like Dickens' Great Expecatations as they were published chapter by chapter back in the 19th Century. Chapter cliffhangers that last a week (or a month) instead of the time it takes to turn a page!

If anything Elend echoes Alendi in character, the man who wrote the logbook from the first book that Rashek (necessarily) killed at the Well of Ascension. A man who only reluctantly and after a lot of convincing took the hard actions needed to gather power and to rule firmly in a time of global crisis, and who ultimately truly did aim to give up that power for the greater good.

That's one of the most amazing aspects of the Mistborn trilogy, to me - how it managed to take who was "obviously" the Evil Overlord Who Must Be Destroyed from the first book, and actually turning him into The Guy Who Saved The World From Ruin For 1,024 Years in the third one, and is openly thanked for it - by a Terrisman who had been part of the core crew that worked to take him down, and whose people was oppressed, and who was personally castrated, by TLR's programs! (Not to mention what kind of horrible life Tindwyl, the woman he'd loved, had endured!) As for you "rooting for Spook" - I guess it's not made clear at the end of The Hero of Ages, but Spook is not only made Mistborn by Sazed at the end, "to help rebuild society", he's actually the only surviving Mistborn in the world after the cataclysmic ending, as nearly everyone who could burn atium had been recruited to destroy the kandra's Trust by burning it to kill koloss. It's a minor spoiler for "The Alloy of Law" and the subsequent "Era 2" trilology of Mistborn books to tell you that Spook ends up succeeding Elend as Emperor, and hundreds of years later, his Eastern Street Slang is called High Imperial (used for formal things like the motto written over school gates). LOLOL. Word of advice: don't dive right into "The Alloy of Law" and the Era 2 trilogy. Or, for that matter, "Mistborn: Secret History". Take some time to savor and digest.

The next (?) flashback will explain this. (In "The Thrill" passages from Unfettered II, it's the next flashback, set "28 years ago", five years after the "brave boy crying" flashback we just got previewed in Oathbreaker.)

How far can the spren range from their bonded person and retain intelligence? Syl mentioned she was "less herself" the farther she went from Kaladin, when she went to get a blackbane leaf for him just as he was considering leaping into Honor Chasm. His bond with Syl is now much stronger, with much more personality, so one could assume she could range farther, too. What about if he summons her as a Sylblade when she's peeping over in the next shack? Is there a delay as her physical form has to travel back, or do spren effectively Elsecall when summoned while doing something autonomous, going from Physical to Cognitive and then back to the Physical Realms?

He married Shshshsh "for her Shardplate", meaning, to bring her family's Shards under Kholinar control. Not for his own personal use. (It's noted elsewhere that Adolin's Plate is the set from his mother's family.) I guess you haven't read the Dalinar flashbacks from Unfettered II , which are all coming out in Oathbringer anyway - we've already seen half of them in the first 12 chapters. Since they appear to be coming out in the same order, the next Dalinar flashback will deal with Dalinar meeting Shshshsh (and you'll find out her name, too).

"strength before weakness"

With all the talk about the events at The Rift, I compared the words that Tanalan throws in Dalinar's face during his assault, and Dalinar's own words much later. Tanalan: 33 years later, Dalinar, to Wit: Not only has Dalinar come full circle, notice how even then, he explicitly states that Sadeas seeks to take the throne not from Elhokar, but from him.

Dude, I was intentionally misreading your comment for humorous effect. No offense intended.

Um... Reading a flashback of a young Blackthorn Dalinar rampaging and apparently killing a seven year old boy,... cracked you up? *backs away slowly*