robardin

Oops, I meant "Kaladin"! ... Or did I? For that was what Syl said to Kaladin after he revived her in deciding to defend the unconscious Elhokar from two Shardbearers, despite having no powers himself at the time - thus embodying the Second and importantly, also the Third Ideals of the Windrunners. So at the end of Rhythm of War, after we learn the truth about the deadspren (that they willingly sacrificed their bonds along with their Radiants in the Recreance, albeit without knowing that "deadeye" spren would be the result - and that it's linked to the capture of Ba-Ado-Mishram and the zombification of the parsh), and even after Shallan has seen her first cryptic in "Testament" in Shadesmar... ...how come Testament hasn't revived the way that Syl did, after she has now remembered her act of rejection and (apparently) recanted or regretted doing it? The obvious answer is: she is only as dead as Shallan's oaths. Or in the case of Shallan as a Lightweaver, her Truths. Shallan is still lying to herself, suppressing recalling whatever she told Testament as at least one of her Truths, for she said at least two of them to count for the Second and Third Ideals to be able to summon a Testamentblade. I think it must be only one of the two Truths, because she was, after all, still able to summon Testament as a Blade, had her Memory "perk" working, and even to do some light Lightweaving and Soulcasting after "killing" her yet before bonding Pattern on the Wind's Pleasure shortly before it was sunk in the attempted murder of Jasnah: her bond to Testament was not as dead as Kaladin's to Syl was, where he couldn't even do spear forms well any more. But if the bond was not "as" broken as Kaladin's was to Syl, that would imply it should be easier to revive, right? (The difficultly being that Shallan is a red-headed cuckoo-bananas nutcase?)

What I meant is that Gavilar always has to speak aloud to the FSF for them to pick up. As if to an avatar of sorts, not via a mental bond. Dalinar, Kaladin, and Shallan often have completely mental two-way conversations with their spren.

I'm firmly in Camp Stormfaker Whatever is going on for Gavilar to see Honor's visions, it's not through a burgeoning spren bond, as Gavilar intentionally tests if the "Stormfather" can hear his thoughts or only insert into his head, and FSF (Fake Stormfather) does not But the real SF definitely hears Dalinar thinking to himself, not just directly addressing him

It seems pretty unlikely, but I guess if Khriss is visiting Scadrial by at least Secret History, I suppose why not Kenton? Still, getting a street named after you in The Lord Ruler’s own city probably required getting in good with him or at least ranking members of the Steel Ministry going some years back, and most worldhoppers seem to keep a relatively low profile (unless, like Felt in SA, they “go native” and marry and take employment and whatnot on a new planet, settling in for a reasonably long term versus just passing through). Another example of name crossing in the Cosmere would be Zu - definitely different people despite the shared name, as one is a male Captain of the guards in The Emperor’s Soul (the main one who hates Shai), and the other a female Iriali Stoneward in Rhythm of War who is one of the Radiants who accompanies Adolin and Shallan to Lasting Integrity.

And "Kenton Street" in Luthadel that led to the Square of the Survivor, where Allriane and Vin have a dress-shopping spree at one point, had nothing to do with the Sand Master of Taldain, either. Well, not in-world. I guess since he'd written but not yet published White Sand when writing Mistborn: TFE, he could have just had the name rolling around in his head.

It could certainly be both. In this prologue, he has flashes of regret over his treatment of Navani, and reasons for wanting Jasnah to match up with Amaram, but when you go back and see what he actually said to them while doing these things - exhibiting a "cold anger", obsessing about his "legacy", demanding that Jasnah "just obey" - it's just like the darker memories Shallan has of her father. Who also would later "come down from it" a bit and be regretful of what happened, but never actually taking responsibility for it, nor thinking about how it should/could go differently in the future.

Yes, after reading the Prologue to RoW I thought the way Gavilar talked and acted seemed very reminiscent of how Shallan's father acted, and we know that was somehow related to the influence of an Unmade And there's no reason he couldn't still have been under that influence while also being worked on by... Whoever this StormFaker is (might even make it more likely, if that Unmade, like Nergoul, were "dumb" instead of "intelligent")

If Shallan's mother was indeed Chana... That just raises a whole bunch more questions If Heralds can have children (father or mother), and they've been "civilians" for thousands of years... Shouldn't there be a lot of Heraldic descendants? Why would Chana have married a relatively minor Veden lighteyes? But most of all, if this means that she was the one who "broke" on Braize to start this Final Desolation (since we know it wasn't Taln), ... That means Chana is back on Roshar now, and it is possible that Shallan will run into her again? I mean, it would HAVE to happen, right? Why set that scenario up if it wouldn't? Like the poor girl isn't messed up enough in the head!

Yes, I wasn't talking about what Pattern knew or pretended to know - I was talking about Shallan equating "that Blade was Pattern" and "Pattern is a living spren" with "the Blade vanished to mist". That's not how deadspren Blades "vanish to mist"; they need to be dismissed, even as she does later when summoning the Testamentblade with Tyn. Just saying it's possible. Re-reading her (presumably now truthful) memory of how she killed Testament in RoW, it isn't clear if that is before or after her father had hastily "put the Shardblade away".

I think "StormFaker" is great too, and officially put forth that the Faker is Cultivation (so let it be written!) As for what was in the safe... Shallan says to Pattern at the end of WoR as she remembers killing her mother, to advance (again) in Ideals, Well Shallan still wasn't thinking clearly even in recounting this, as she's still not remembered that she broke her bond with "Testament", the Cryptic spren she had been bonded to at the time (and who formed that Blade). Pattern is obligingly pretending (as he did all the way through to nearly the end of RoW) that he was the same spren all along, but he knows he wasn't. It stands to reason that for a while anyway, with the bond broken, that that "small Shardblade" - knife-sized, small enough to be wielded by a child - remained locked in that form like any other deadspren Shardblade after being summoned, "killed", and abandoned - the way the weapons at Feverstone Keep were. It could well be that it remained in that box until the next time Shallan summoned Testament as a Blade, in killing Tyn. We just don't know.

But we see from Dalinar's experiences of the visions that Honor had a clear to-do list of suggestions for his successor: Refound the Knights Radiant. Vex Odium. Convince him he can lose. Propose a Contest of Champions. And that he was already kind of rambling and losing it mentally, and aware of that, while recording the visions. Why would he go so far off that script with Gavilar while showing him the same visions? Which he apparently saw without the same voiceover? And suddenly be so present of mind as to plot, scheme, and feign? Plus, the Words that Gavilar "almost got right" with the so-called Stormfather was in demanding "give it to me, now" in response to mention of "the position I am offering you" - which is not the way the Stormfather ever refers to his bond with Dalinar, if you consider that to be "offering the position" of Bondsmith, especially before the bond was formed (where the SF is angry about the prospect at the end of WoR: I will not be bound....!) It's the kind of boon/bane thing a presumed Cultivation offers Dalinar here. The boon would have been something like, Gavilar becomes something like a Herald, bolstering the weakening Oathpact (or creating a new one... There's usually a pause before using the word "Herald" to Gavilar in this prologue). And the bane would be, it's not what he thought he signed up for. (Probably why she describes the downsides to being a human-immortal spren combo - she has to quote the price, so to speak, and give the person a chance to state their knowing Intent.) On the other hand, saying that the Words Gavilar needed to find were in Nohadon's The Way of Kings was interesting. The obvious reference would be to the Immortal Words of the First Ideal, common to all Radiants, but surely Gavilar would have tried that already? (Assuming it's mentioned in that work somewhere?) It could be a passage we haven't yet seen. And apparently, Gavilar's "isn't it obvious?" answer to how he would deal with eons of torture in between bouts of fighting managed to be a complete surprise. "I'll just give up immediately and go right back to fighting - isn't that the point?" And he kind of does have a point. If you're fighting to win, why would you stop before you win? The cycles of Desolations of setbacks and clawbacks just means you're respawning from an earlier point in the game every time, so to speak?

Brandon is pretty good about retaining “voices” - a style of mode of speech - when people are talking (or writing!) in a way not known to the reader. For example, it’s easy to spot Sazed from Mistborn speaking/writing in chapter headings once you realize that’s a possibility. At the end of this SA5 Prologue, once the “real” Stormfather emerges and speaks in smallcaps to Dalinar (I see this is not reflected in the text transcribed to the Arcanum though; in the newsletter it looked like thiis — this is the only time it’s different, everything Gavilar has been thinking was the SF until then was in italics, plus the last words as he lay dying…) The smallcaps “Stormfather” reads/sound like the arrogant, yet fatalistic, SF we see interacting with Kaladin and Dalinar in the first two books. Implying all the other SF words to Gavilar, and the shimmering, etc., were NOT the Stormfather. Or, of course, it could be that Cultivation could show him the Honorvisions all on her own, and the Stormfather (as we see later) never talked to Gavilar at all, except for the fact that we'd had numerous WoBs over the years that Dalinar was not the first person the SF had "investigated" per Honor's last commands, and that Gavilar had seen the visions. (While leaving out the specific detail that that meant it was the Stormfather who'd showed Gavilar those visions... Hmm!) If you go and read the earlier italicized parts, then, as well as the last parting words, it obviously is not Rayse (as you noted). Well, does it read/sound like to you what we’ve seen from Tezim (Crazy Ishar)? Tanavast, as we see in the real visions that Dalinar later experiences (and who never talks back)? Why suppose he has a “Shadow” separate from the Splintered part of him that attached to the Stormfather? Even granting that possibility, are the words and actions - lying to Gavilar, disguising himself as another, etc., - are those the actions of Honor? But we’ve seen Cultivation is extremely canny, crafty, and subtle in manipulation… Now go back and read the one time we see Cultivation present herself, when Dalinar visits the Nightwatcher in Oathbringer. Sounds pretty close, eh? Except for cloaking herself in italics the way a spren speaking mentally to a person would (ironically, not the way the Stormfather usually would, though he’s capable of both “godspeak” and “sprenspeak”)?

Right, I forgot the order of events there. So if my theory here were correct, her comment about "never trusting your family again" refers to trusting them to take up a re-energized Oathpact? And yet here we see Dalinar intending to try doing just that at the end of RoW. After this spren that speaks in italics to Gavilar had observed, He has potential you do not see, that one. He could be more than you think. And I am more certain that ever that Taravodium's exultation "you have no idea what you have done" is 100% wrong. As for putting her long-term plan for swapping in Taravangian for Rayse as the Vessel of Odium, .... how the heck did she end up with Nightblood? Implied to be in her possession already by the time of Dalinar's visit soon after this?

That's a good point and now I'm even more inclined to think this is Cultivation doing another "pruning" (of the Stormfather, in this case) In fact, if Cultivation is able to (and inclined to) "prune" godspren like the Stormfather, why not also Ba-Ado-Mishram. How did Mishram suddenly gain the ability to become "a little god" to empower the "parsh" with forms of power, Voidlight, and so on? Would that not be a kind of "changing and growing"? And yes, maybe Cultivation was working to trick Gavilar into (a) bonding the Stormfather and thus taking up the power of a Bondsmith, and then to (b) renew the Oathpact? And the last comment to Gavilar, "I will never trust your family again. I made that mistake once." That "again" could refer to Dalinar's visit that has also already happened, right? Because why else say "made that mistake once" in talking to Gavilar, if the mistake in question is Gavilar? Seems like it must mean "once before (you)". Also, we see Taravangian shaken by Gavilar's verbatim echoing of his own other's Death Rattle, foretelling the Everstorm. Might that not be what precipitates him to go to the Nightwatcher asking for the "capacity to stop what is to come", this validation that that truly was a divinely inspired vision of the future and not the mumblings of a dying woman? Meaning, Cultivation's long game wrt him and Odium hadn't yet been put into play?

Especially one who'd never summoned a Blade before. That was the first time, right? Even a Herald might not recognize which Ideal Shallan had reached, just recognized her using Illumination.

Wow, I only just read this Prologue to KoW this morning via an emailed newsletter and it did not disappoint! Ever since seeing Gavilar's depiction in RoW I thought he exhibited a mentality very similar to what we saw from Shallan's father - I have guessed that to be the influence of an Unmade - and the way this Prologue ended, suggested maybe the Stormfather had someone been taken over, compromised, or outright in cahoots with that same Unmade (!!) But no, at the end, it talks in italics to Gavilar referring to Odium as "the enemy" and how "this is my failure as much as yours". And says how he would turn away from Dalinar... Could it be another Shard?! Cultivation? Seems too dodgy to introduce a fourth Shard to Events on Roshar like that, after all. Chanarach being described as a redheaded woman, combined with the timing of the death of a Herald that the SF felt, plus earlier WoBs that Taln had not broken to spark the Final Desolation (it was another Herald), it all fits too perfectly to be a coincidence... But then why was she moving to attack Shallan? (I guess the answer is: "All of the Heralds are insane...")

You know, I just realized this thread started in Nov 2021, well after the publication of (and board spoiler period ended for) Rhythm of War. The only person we've seen so far endowed with "all ten Surges" of Roshar is Amaram at Thaylen Fields in Oathbringer after "bonding" with the Unmade Yelig-nar, though he didn't have very much time to practice using any of them (and it's unclear who ever would, with Yelig-nar, who "consumes" the host (i.e., we don't know what a putative maximum time with Y-N might be - or if like with Nightblood you could extend that time with an external store of Investiture, or if Y-N specifically consumes "souls"). He was beaten by a Windrunner and his squire - I think a fully trained Fullborn would be able to take him down. The really chilling idea would be someone who could wield all the Surges with enough time to be deeply proficient in all of them. And if this matchup occurs after Honor is dead. Because what we see Tezim do as a "Bondsmith Unchained" in RoW is pretty terrifying. If the Fullborn is not educated/prepared for it, and a Tezim equivalent could touch the Fullborn to form a Connection... Ooh baby. I mean, the Stormfather described what he did in "grounding" Sigzil and the other Windrunners to siphon their Stormlight away like so: Ishar Connected them to the ground. Essentially, their powers saw the stones as part of their body—and so tried to fill the ground with Stormlight as it fills their veins. If a Feruchemist's powers "saw the stones of the earth as part of their body", that would wreak quite a bit of havoc on tapping a goldmind or ironmind... And would probably make an Allomancer's Steelpushing or Ironpulling suddenly and incredibly different. Like, Pushing off a coin on the ground to fly suddenly wouldn't work at all, because now it was the earth pushing against itself with the coin in between (would just squish the coin flat).

In an old post, I likened the Rashek we see at the end of TFE as being like someone who's spent hours on a frustrating crossword puzzle and then just giving up. Except "hours" for him was decades upon decades, and hundreds of years ago. So if you've ever worked at a puzzle or problem only to give up, you're in no position to judge him as "lazy", IMHO. He's lived for a thousand years, with Ruin whispering at him all that time, and yet (as he himself wrote to his obligators, on a steel plate in a Ministry cache) he'd long ago given up trying to figure out how to defeat Ruin, instead laying plans for the world surviving Ruin's eventual escape - likely without him around. This despite being able to Compound zinc for nigh-infinite mental capacity, and bronze to stay awake all the time, and so on... At a certain point, even having all the time in the world to think about something doesn't mean you'll ever figure it out. At the end of the day, he was an angry, violent packman with a chip on his shoulder to begin with, who happened to be a Feruchemist and thus suitable for a guiding a long, hard mountain expedition. He wasn't prepared to figure out about Ruin - he may not even have been all that religiously grounded in the Terris religion before dealing with Ruin. All Terris Worldbringers were Feruchemists, but not all Feruchemists were Worldbringers (as Rashek was not, as Kwaan was the only Worldbringer to have gone back on backing Alendi going to the Well "to give up the power for the greater good"). But also at the end of the day, the very act of planning for the world surviving beyond him speaks well for him. Even his dying words were to express fear for the doom of all mankind without him, not to revile those who had brought him down, or the usual "NOOO I AM INVINCIBLE!!!" type of line.

And then, having left Scadrial for good, yet obviously still possessed of your IRL knowledge of Published Cosmere Plotline circa March 2022, you realize that it's 250 years or so yet to go to the events of Warbreaker (the Manywar on Nalthis being less than 100 years ago), and about 300 years before the events of The Way of Kings, you hop over to Nalthis to get to the Fifth Heightening so you can maintain infinite youth without needing constant atium Compounding, and now plan your next moves... And hey, since you've "gone good" that means you have not just Marsh but potentially a whole squad of Inquisitors to back you up! Unless you left them behind for Elend to command as the new Emperor. I mean say what you will about them and their Ruinous tendencies (which Harmony might smooth out once Ascended - in our glimpses of Era 2 Marsh he seems pretty normal again, mentally), they're pretty effective enforcers.

Bah! He saved the world once, and its people a second time! Had he not done his atium hiding thing with the kandra, Ruin would likely have amassed his power back soon after being released (because atium would have been openly and commonly floating around the population otherwise - easy for his minions to find and to gather). And without the storage cavern business with locations on steel plates and food caches and all, even had the kandra kept the atium from him all that time, all the people - including Vin - would have died of starvation before the end. It was made pretty clear. If not all the people, then the vast majority of people. Even Vin and Sazed mentally thanked Rashek for "what he'd done for mankind" once they realized, and they suffered tremendously under the Final Empire! I mean, could he have done a better job? Certainly to have done it... More nicely? Uh, yeah. But "poor showing", sorry, that's not fair to ol' Rashek. Arrogant and a little bit dumb (given that he could infinitely compound zinc), OK, maybe; even "sloppy"; but "lazy"? There's good evidence he put his Compounding to use by personally seal those cans under Kredik Shaw!

It can't be a child, or Cultivation(?!), as Odium's Champion, any more than it can be Dalinar vs. himself, or Kaladin. Odium already tried to claim Dalinar, and then Kaladin, to be his champion, but both turned away from him. Clearly, he can't just make whoever or whatever his champion. I mean, even if the example of Dalinar at Thaylen Fields wasn't enough (who Odium had been "grooming" with the Thrill for most of his adult life), the very terms of the contest specify "We each send a WILLING champion, allowed to meet at the top of Urithiru..." And it'd be a strange scenario where a child - even little Gavinor, who wants revenge on Moash - both is deemed to be "of contractual age" for such a thing, and also becomes the Champion for the side that Moash is on. I think @Frustration is spot on that there is some classic Sanderson twist in the works vis-a-vis the Contest, that it won't be a simple winner-take-all throwdown grudge match. But what? I think it is very telling when Taravodium is thinking about how a clever person (which Mr. T is, and Rayse was not) would arrange things so that "no matter the outcome, he would be satisfied", and that he even saw a way to still do that despite being bound to the terms Rayse had already agreed to with Dalinar It smacks of Hoid talking to Jasnah (RoW, Ch. 99) while drafting his suggested contract with Odium (the one that specified him as a go-between and thus exempt from being a direct target of Odium's), about how he once lost to a gambler on Nalthis despite rigging the game: "I shouldn't have been able to lose. Yet I did. Someone else rigged the game so that no matter what move I made, I could not win. The game was a tie, something I hadn't anticipated." Consider that the terms specify how each side (Team Odium v. Team Honor) would get a specified outcome if that side's champion "won" the "contest to the death". It does not specify what happens in the event of a tie, which could here cannot be interpreted as "both sides win" as the results would be contradictory. But it CAN be interpreted as "neither side wins", in which case... Does that mean the pre-contest status quo stands? Or would something else be made possible after a no-win contest that was not possible for Odium before? I also feel like whatever Taravangian is thinking of doing, Cultivation already foresaw him possibly doing and manipulated him towards doing. I mean, surely she's the source of that "warm light" that Dalinar, Kaladin, etc., have felt from time to time that is independent of Honor's visions and not Stormlight, right? And it was Rayse who hadn't wanted to partake of any other Shard than Odium, to be the last Shard standing - that wasn't actually part of the Shard's intent (and Rayse straining to "do his thing" was part of what "left him vulnerable" in the end, as a Vessel)? Are we going to see a new Shard after SA5, the Shard of War? Now that would be Cultivation's greatest act of "nurturing a change"!

It's not stated but implied that it was Ulim; the prologue to Oathbringer has Eshonai reflecting on the Five's reaction to Gavilar's revelation and claim about restoring "their gods" (the Fused), As to why Odium (via Ulim) would want Gavilar killed? To precipitate the war between Alethkar and the listeners, which would eventually drive the listeners in desperation to embrace forms of power - needing listeners embracing stormform to be able to summon/create the Everstorm.

Renarin has also sublimated his "fits" after bonding Glys into his "stained glass Odium-vision" thing; they're equally involuntary. I think it'll be interesting to see how Rlain experiences the visions of the future, assuming he does, via his Sja-anat touched mistspren

So here's the passage and description in question: I don't think that's a setup for Kaladin next talking about dead lighteyes getting Soulcast into stone as an honor, because we'd already seen that mentioned in WoK while Bridge Four were doing chasm scavenging duty: "Sometimes the bodies of fallen lighteyes would be recovered from the chasms by special teams so the corpse could be Soulcast into a statue. Darkeyes, unless they were very wealthy, were burned. And most soldiers who fell into the chasms were ignored..." I think the giant stone foot is meant to be "worldbuilding flavor", a throwaway description; but it is a bit odd. If it's made of stone, how does an "unfinished statue" comprise only the foot? Was it meant to be carved and then assembled from pieces from the bottom up? I suppose truly enormous ones are?

But harmonium is not a "lost metal" in Era 2 To the Northerners it's been completely unknown since Harmony's Ascension (you can't lose what was never had), and to the Southerners it's evidently a routine part of their Metallic Arts based technology