robardin

I don't get this POV as a reader. How can "everyone important becomes a Radiant" be "boring" when there are TEN ORDERS of Radiants, not counting the fact that the three Bondsmith spren are very different from each other, and also not counting the fact that we now have two "standard issue" Truthwatchers bonded to mistspren and two "warlight" Truthwatchers bonded to Sja-anat "Enlightened" spren (and presumably she could "Enlighten" other spren as well, unless mistspren are for some reason particularly open to her touch - which may be the case)? Or that when listeners bond with a Radiant spren, they "have room" in their gemheart to bond a Voidspren (Venli) and therefore, possibly another Radiant spren? There shouldn't be a forced reason for a main character to become Radiant, but since it seems the spren tend to cluster around groups of people anyway, it would seem more unnatural and forced if Adolin and others close to the Kholins didn't bond one. It would feel like they were somehow unworthy, which none of them seem to be, or being discriminated against, as Rlain was (when he and Dabbid alone of Bridge Four had not bonded one). Yes, there are certainly a lot of people on Roshar "worthy" of Radiant spren bonds - why are they all going to Kholins? Because that's how it works. It snowballs. Maybe if Kaladin had stayed in Hearthstone, that would have become Windrunner Central. But he didn't. And the nature of the Radiants is to somehow gather together, like Shallan seeking out Jasnah. (Sure she thought it was because she wanted to rob her of the Soulcaster, which seems on minimal reflection to be a ridiculous idea - how would they get away with using it, as Jasnah pointed out? - but it was really the "banding instinct" of Radiants at work.) I personally want a Gaz POV, now that we know he's actually bonded a Cryptic and is not simply a Lightweaver squire to Shallan. Going back and re-reading TWoK, he really was kind of a cowardly cremhole, who knew it and felt bad about it. If you want to complain about "so what's character X done that's worthy of gaining a spren, other than hang around a Main Character Radiant?", it'd be someone like him, not Adolin.

You remember more details about K&M's past that I did :). They weren't (necessarily) raised in the nobleman's actual home (like in the House stronghold), in TFE Ch. 8, Vin recalls Kelsier talking about his past as: So the father was alive and apparently the one who called in the Ministry on their mother (and by extension, on them). They could certainly have been living in a "mistress' house" all that time (most likely, the "legitimate wife" would not want a child-bearing mistress around all the time to rub it in her face as to what was going on). Marsh, the elder brother, says that he Snapped when he was very young (and Kell would have been even younger), and that his mother being taken by obligators is what did it, "and that's when I vowed to destroy them. So, I joined the rebellion..." Which taken at face value, means all those events happened in close sequence. So their still-living father discovers the truth about his "noble mistress", who's borne two children for him already; the mother is taken as a skaa; Marsh Snaps; and oh by the way, if their mother was outed as skaa then he and Kelsier are illegal half-breeds, better go underground. (How that was managed, or who shielded them to adulthood and how, we don't know.) Of course, when Marsh says he was "very young" he doesn't mean a toddler, but still obviously younger than the age a noble child would have been given the ritual the Beating of the Wanting of the Snap (as the hip young kids in the Eastern Dominances would say). I don't remember if there is any mention in the Mistborn books or any WoB about what age that was, but probably around puberty (so maybe 13 years old?). Then again, I remember a passage (I'll try to look it up later) where Kelsier reflects on how he wasn't "fond" of Marsh but did love him, despite the unspoken tension in all their goodbyes to each other while growing up as hidden half-breeds carrying an undertone of "don't do something stupid and get me killed along with you", or something to that effect. So they definitely spent at least Kelsier's adolescence growing up while knowingly posing as nobles. ETA: found it, it was not in Mistborn (Era 1) but Secret History, Ch. 2: So here, from Kelsier's POV - and by now he's dead and talking to himself in the CR, why would he lie? - he grew up with Marsh, both of them knowing they were secretly half-skaa, and after both parents had passed away they decided not to keep up the pretense (implying they could have done so) but went into the skaa underground of Luthadel. Which in turn, implies the noble father may well have been in on the secret the whole time (similar to Beldre's parents in Urteau). Well, I don't know what to make of this very conflicting information. Someone ought to raise this to Brandon, eh? In Kelsier's original description of his past, I guess it's possible that when "their father finally discovered the truth", that that father at least initially chose to shield them rather than betray them (I mean, Lord Ruler, they're his kids and the mother of his children, maybe even his only children if his legitimately noble wife hadn't borne any!). And then only later, when the Inquisition caught both of their parents up in their net (resulting in their deaths at basically the same time), did they go underground. And Kelsier's fantasizing of what "might have been" centered around "if we'd never been caught".

Well it is a fight "to the death" so I guess it won't be like Adolin's arena duel, where someone leaving the grounds would lose as a technical DQ. How about a Fused as a Champion of Odium who technically isn't dead unless you use an anti-Voidlight dagger? But no. I strongly suspect that Taravangian's "loophole" is more along the lines of "with either outcome I get what I really want", and not so much as "I figured out a way to give my Champion an all but guaranteed win". Note that the way the conditions are presently outlined, Odium will remain bound to Roshar in either outcome. And what Odium most wants, regardless of the Vessel, is to be free from that constraint, which Dalinar can grant him explicitly (as holding the remnants of Honor), or simply lose the administration of through reneging on his oath. Somehow, Vargodium plans to choose a Champion, or surround his Champion with a context of some kind, such that Dalinar will be all but forced to "break the contract". And so what are the parameters of that contract (not the agreed upon stakes or outcomes)? "A contest of champions to the death. On the tenth day of the month Palah, tenth hour. We each send a willing champion, allowed to meet at the top of Urithiru, otherwise unharmed by either side's forces." Is there a "champion" he could send out there that someone else among Team Dalinar (not the designated champion) would not be able to resist lashing out at, despite the stakes? Or someone who Dalinar's champion would be "unwilling" to fight to the death, thus negating the first bolded part?

Right, I took a look again at Shallan's drawings of Urithiru that are at the beginning of RoW (before the Prologue), and it does have a flat top. The scene with the Fused throwing Kaladin's father off of the top, it mentioned a "pinnacle" which usually suggests a spire or something else rising and tapering to a point, so I was imagining a Championship Fight with any ground fighting possibly having to occur around it, like a deadly Maypole dance. But Shallan's picture doesn't show one. I guess "pinnacle" was just meant as "the tippy-top level". I also wondered how throwing Lirin from there would see him falling to within 20 feet of the ground (at the base of the mountain?) as it seems like he'd most likely simply land on a lower level's parapet. I guess the Fused happened to throw (or intentionally threw) Lirin off the westward side, and the highstorm blew him further out away from the tower (and Kaladin as well).

But the wording is also a contest "to the death". And unless there is something like a flat roof on top of Urithiru, it'll have to be a fight between flying opponents?

Actually "parsh" was the term used during the False Desolation, which was when they fought the humans and Radiants with warform and Regal forms of Odium's power but not Fused via BAM. They were also "granted Voidlight", not sure if that meant they got Regals with One Surge but who were not immortally recycled. Even then it was a new term, as Oathbringer Ch. 77 through 81 have these epigraphs "From drawer 30-20, first through fifth emeralds": It's not clear where the term "parsh" arose though. It may never have been used by "the parsh" themselves, and have been a term coined and used only by humans.

I couldn’t help it, i went back today to reread parts of The Way of Kings to “see” Teft alive again. Storms, Teft. They’ll always still need you. But you were there when you were needed the most. Sergeant of Honor, indeed. And did everyone notice Teft’s Connection to Kaladin as he reached the Fourth Ideal? Kelek’s breath, lad, you can do it!

I suspect that something like a Shard being released and then taken up again would have reverberations in the Cosmere that those in tune with it would pick up on. Not just other Shards, but very likely the members of the Ire, the 17th Shard, and "by now" the Ghostbloods. From Mistborn: Secret History we see that the Ire had carefully laid plans for "when" not "if" Preservation were dropped by its dying Vessel, and Khriss likewise knew it was "in the air" (albeit too dangerous for her to be personally and physically close to witnessing, due to Ruin's hostile presence). That is different from knowing anything about the new Vessel. But unless Taravangian is extremely convincing, it's not going to pass muster if he tries to act like Rayse decided to give up the power and Descend, "just for a bit, right, to eat some food and see if it tasted the way I remembered it", before taking the Shard back up again. At any rate, the Fused certainly know, or at least El does, who refers to the "newest Odium, who was so recently one of them [humans]" in his Musings on the Final Ten Days.

Another unspecified condition: when are the Champions supposed to be named? Is "naming" a champion binding, or can either Odium or Dalinar change their mind right up until the point the figurative bell rings? Do they have to be named or enter the fighting ring simultaneously? Is there a ring? The specified location is "on top of Urithiru"; what exactly is up there? What if Vargodium does what some are speculating he'll do, and names a child or infant as his champion, expecting Dalinar to be unable to bring himself to strike it down (the basis for the Death Rattle about a man holding a blade to a suckling child and everybody wishing him to let the knife drop)... But Dalinar, seeing his gambit, responds by also naming a baby as his own champion?

...and Mercy is deciding to do a catch-and-release into the backyard of that bug instead of smushing it - let's say, purely theoretically, a four-inch long house centipede you suddenly noticed was motionless on the wall right behind your head at breakfast. ...and Invention is deciding to MacGyver a cup-and-napkin trap with stuff on the table. ...and Whimsy is shrieking comically while dropping the cup and falling backward when the centipede runs over the napkin and across the back of your hand, which you shake off. ...and Prudence is seeing the centipede disappearing by running under furniture and deciding to just forget this ever happened. Purely theoretically. Because this never happened. Certainly not to me.

There's no physical resemblance in the descriptions to link Vin with Kelsier and Marsh (who are described as resembling each other), but I like to think House Tekiel (whence came Tevidian the High Prelan, Vin's father) had a pattern of being deceived about skaa women passing as noble. Now, how would that be? It seems unlikely that this would be an easy deception, and with both their mothers (unlike with Beldre, who was raised as a "legitimate" noble with a faked origin, passing her off as the legitimate noble wife's offspring), they were women "passing" as noble mistresses, not wives but not simple prostitutes either. Mistresses bearing not just one, but multiple illegitimate children, in a long-term relationship. Children who would never have house claims (like with Zane). Why have such mistresses? I doubt that Straff Venture was unique in his efforts to produce more Allomancers for his House beyond what legitimate marriages would allow, even if he was perhaps exceptionally dedicated. But nobody would risk Inquisitor wrath by knowingly breeding with a skaa woman. I imagine them seeking out documented noble women who were destitute or desperate, and contracting with them: setting them up with a house and income and retirement, like with a Gigi-style courtesan, while claiming rights to take the illegitimate children if they Snapped as Allomancers when tested at around age ten or so. If Straff Venture had many more of these mistresses than others, it'd be because House Venture was the richest and most powerful House, and because Straff was willing to, ah, put in the extra effort, but probably all Houses had a few like this. These "desperate noble women looking to become courtesan Allomantic broodmares" would be in short supply and high demand. I imagine there'd be an underground brokerage service of sorts arranging the deals, and providing the pedigree of the women. In this context, the payoff for passing off a skaa woman as noble would be enormous (there'd more likely be children). And when the Inquisitors came a-calling, it'd be the actual people involved in the illegal breeding that would be subject to the worst penalties (death), as opposed to a broker who could hope to claim they were merely misled by false paperwork provided to them (or who could more easily disappear into the underground). For the skaa women, a brutal death would be on the line, but it would be the opportunity to live the life of a noble for a while, maybe forever (surely some got away with it for life - especially outside Luthadel), so for one trained or educated enough to pass as noble, it was probably a welcome opportunity. A normal skaa life was likely to be short and brutal anyway. Straff would be meticulous in his verification process, but once any given House - like Tekiel, with Tevidian - had either a corrupt or gullible "vetting agent" who didn't notice a skaa woman passing, that broker would procure more while the profit window was open. So even if it wasn't Tevidian himself who fathered both Vin and the Dynamic Duo, it seems more likely that House Tekiel got "taken in" by a procuring broker for multiple people in their House, than that two different noble Houses might have had similar breaches. And perhaps that is what set Kar on the track of Tevidian's "policy violation" in particular. If one Tekiel had been caught this way ten years earlier (referring to Unknown Tekiel who hooked up with Marsh and Kel's mother), maybe another Tekiel with known mistresses - like Tevidian, the high prelan of the Steel Ministry they wanted to take down - would have a similar cover-up story.

I learned of Brandon Sanderson from his taking over to complete the Wheel of Time books, which I'd been reading for a long, long time. I greatly enjoyed his writing style and pace - it felt distinct from Jordan's while managing also to be true to the characters, not an easy feat - and I read that Harriet "Jordan" had selected him for this difficult task based on being super-impressed with his "debut" trilogy of Mistborn. So, I picked it up and it blew me away with its multiple nested reveals that were all right there from the beginning, and the extremely tight and innovative "hard" magic system. Then I found that Elantris was actually his first published novel, just not as a trilogy, and that my wife already had it on our bookshelf, I just hadn't noticed it! So I read that one. Then came Warbreaker, which was a free e-book and a "standalone" story (ha), as was the award-winning The Emperor's Soul, which blew me away in a new way, and I was like, what can this guy do to surprise me further? Over the holidays that year, I told a friend of mine of my "discovery" of Sanderson, and he had already read those books. And he gifted me a copy of The Way of Kings, saying this was like "the ultimate in Brandon Sanderson", but I was put off not by it being a gigantic "doorstop" novel a la the Wheel of Time books, but that it was Book One of a TEN VOLUME story arc. Given how TWoT took twenty-three years to finish (and with another writer), and how a "5- no, now it'll be 7" book story arc in "A Song of Ice and Fire" and even a "trilogy" like the Kingkiller Chronicles have not seen any progress in a nearly a decade, and the fact that I was by now in my 40s, I was like "I can't do this again." I also puzzled as to how TES was described somewhere as being in the same world/setting as Elantris, when pretty much none of the nations, characters, or magic systems overlap. I Googled further and found this forum, where I discovered these works were all linked in a "Cosmere", like a Marvel Universe kind of thing, with common underlying "magical quantum mechanics", backstory, and long-term dovetailing storc arcs, and I was like, OK, that seals the deal. (This forum is also what first clued me in to this "Hoid" guy.) That's around when Words of Radiance got published. And so, I caved. I decided if anybody could legit finish a ten-book story arc, amid other projects no less, in my lifetime (much less his, as I'm older than Brandon), it'd be him. I tore through TWoK and WoR and have no regrets.

This is an area for clue-mining I had not considered. Are you saying the voice that initially rejects Venli's Second Ideal, and then later accepts it, is the same voice as the Sibling?

Haha yes. "Yes, but aside from the unpleasantry, Mrs. Lincoln, did you enjoy the play?"

He's certainly pretty broken now, in any case.

FYI there was already another thread started about this - wherein I theorized something along these lines, for the mechanism for the regularity but not the reason for whatever it is he's doing.

This is very true. I meant more that Vargodium would never have stood for Lezian's "commission" the way Rayse had done... Explicitly violating his Command as relayed through Vyre not to touch Kaladin as he mourned over Teft's body, ultimately resulting in Kaladin reaching the Fourth Ideal instead, he had something coming his way from Raysodium for sure. Probably not what happened to him with El, but who knows.

Upon Ascending, Taravangian sees this as what had been the state of affairs with Odium: What I read into that last phrase is that the Shard of Odium is not reduced in strength, not like in Mistborn Era 1 when Ruin had a big chunk missing from Preservation's little maneuver. It was not Odium but "his predecessor", Rayse the Vessel, who had been "weakened by his battles in the past" (with Ambition, Devotion, and Dominion), "then deeply wounded by Honor" (who didn't go down quietly), and also "failing to claim Dalinar, then losing the tower and Stormblessed" - evidently Rayse had invested something of himself in all of those things, it was something he (Rayse) wanted (as a "how") more so than the Shardic Intent ("the what and the why"). I think this is a hint as to what will eventually be revealed as to how exactly Raysodium managed to splinter those other Shards, and how he planned to go up against Harmony the Double Shard at some point, where a WoB drew an analogy between Vin and Elend from Mistborn. Vin would win in a fight despite the disparity in "power level" because she is a fighter by nature, and Elend is not. So Rayse evidently had a way to go Vessel-to-Vessel without some kind of mutual Shardic Annihilation thing happening (maybe because those Shards were not diametrically opposite to Odium the way that P&R were) and thereby prevailed, but not without taking on damage. The fact that his failed attempts to capture Dalinar, Urithiru, and Kaladin had also weakened his grip on the Shard is interesting. It may have something to do with whatever Honor and Cultivation did to bind him to the Rosharan system. That binding is still operating on Odium - it wasn't on Rayse as a Vessel - but all those attempts were some kind of move towards a "victory condition" we haven't fully seen yet as readers, and maybe he was only allowed a certain number of moves before having to drop the Shard or something? Wow, that would be interesting.

Not really. Leshwi was probably not alone in assessing his "pursuer" thing eye-rollingly stupid, noting that he had disrupted carefully laid plans many times in his quest to go after the "strongest" Radiant one on one, no matter what. His single-minded obsession was a step towards the "sprenification" type of insanity that the Fused were prone to exhibiting. At the same time, make no mistake, Lezian must have been pretty dangerous because by everybody's reckoning, he'd never been killed by the same Radiant twice. He had always succeeded in a "revenge kill rematch", even against Windrunners of the Fourth Ideal (which he's obviously faced before). He "lived by his reputation", which included a reputation among the Radiants themselves so long as there was an unbroken tradition on both sides. The fact that Kaladin had never heard of him really, really annoyed him... And likely played into why Kaladin was able to do what he did. Not just because he's Kaladin Stormblessed. But because Lezian popping up in front of him and going Rrraah, I'm the Pursuer, a Radiant's worst nightmare! only garnered an initial eye-blinking and then "whatever, have a knife in the throat". His whole "value added" as The Pursuer was to be a morale boost for the singers and an instrument of terror to the Radiants. Now that the Fused and Regals saw him literally run in fright from a Stormlight-crippled Kaladin, and now that this is the version of him the new Radiants only know about, he has no strategic utility as "The Pursuer" at all. Lezian as a regular fighting Fused, keeping his head down and following orders while using his fighting ability to take down other non-Kaladin Radiants - that would be his remaining strategic use, but as you could see from his reaction to being revived, he was not going to accept such a turn of events. And would be very disruptive in trying to resume his "quest". The New Vessel of Odium wouldn't tolerate that kind of thing anyway - Rayse as a bully himself probably liked that angle, while Taravangian the careful plotter would NEVER tolerate the "outside the command structure" commission Lezian had had as The Pursuer.

This is a good interpretation; so far we've only seen Windrunners needing their Words Accepted by a third party, the Stormfather apparently as a proxy for Honor. The two Bondsmiths needed their Words Accepted by the megapsren they were bonding with, and we'd already seen Shallan (Lightweaver), Lift (Edgedancer), and Szeth (Skybreaker) swear later Ideals directly to their spren. They got a burst of power in so doing, but no feedback about their "words being accepted" from another agency.

At first I wondered if it was Tien-as-adult (who he was just talking with in the vision), then I even wondered if it was Teft shoulder-surfing from the Spiritual Realm and butting in as a sergeant one last time. But I think it's clear from the beginning of Ch. 111 who it was: It was Dalinar who Accepted Kaladin's Fourth Ideal, while bonded with the Stormfather in the vision and Connected to both of them. He was the one, as Bondsmith, who was able to give Kaladin that peek into the Spiritual Realm to Connect him to Tien to enable him to say those Words and mean them; and being the first SF Bondsmith while the SF held the remnants of Honor (where the SF is now the one to Accept the Words for certain orders, like Windrunners), he was also in the right place at the right time to be the one to Accept them. Very fitting.

It goes a bit beyond just using the Ultimate Number. There are sixteen metals on the table of Metallic Arts, which are a blend of two Shards (Presevation and Ruin), so for all we know it reflects a summation of "their numbers" - maybe Preservation along would have been 1 and Ruin 15 or something.. Or 8 and 8. Who said the Shardic Numbers had to be unique by Shard? It's not like they're players on a sports team with numbered jerseys!

I don't remember where I wrote this already, but I was thinking it'd be really cool if Notum wanted to bond Adolin. I mean, I have to think after his outburst at the trial ("Honor is not dead so long as he lives in the hearts of men!") he's going to be one of the honorspren going back with Adolin to find a Radiant, and he surely has great esteem for Adolin's honor already, in his returning to save him from the Tukari (especially when it becomes known based on Tezim's tent what was likely to have happened to him, had they succeeded in subduing him). And then, the usual objection a spren has to their Knight holding a bond to a deadeye ("you must divest yourself of that abomination") ends up not applying because Maya isn't an abomination. She's just... A friend. But not rival or one who would interfere with their bond. In fact, I theorized that The Moment that Adolin had with Maya - where he felt a surge of warmth as he passed strength to her, to be able to speak words at his trial - was a kind of reverse Nahel bond, where he was using his soul to patch the gaps in her essence as a deadeye. So a spren bonding Adolin may even have to take Maya along as part of the package.

Even better: they dragged Notum away screaming it repeatedly. "Honor is not dead so long as he lives in the hearts of men!" After trying to buy the honor of an honorspren with a promise of reclaiming his position if he testified against the man who came to save his life at the risk of his own (from what we would eventually see in Tezim's camp to be a truly horrific fate). Of course, Notum is also the source of another one of my favorite quotes from this book - what he said to Adolin when he first told him why he and the others had come back to Shadesmar. I said something like this once to my wife when I felt like the "discussion" was headed towards a full-blown fight. I was right! Another favorite quote, when Raboniel comments on how Venli's service to her was sometimes "distracted", which she ascribed to her true allegiance being to Leshwi, and having to give secret-not-secret reports to her. For a character who was introduced as a kind of nearly insane and amoral "mad scientist" from Leshwi's POV, it turned out she was, like, a great boss to work for. Who'd a thunk it?

Well whatever it was in the pouch that Mraize gave to Raboniel that clinked, it was the "advance payment" for the GB's use of the Oathgates. She recognized it, so it's not likely to be something off-world in nature; yet she took very great care not to give away her true reaction to seeing it by stilling the rhythms in her speech, declaring it a "fine gift." So the Ghostbloods were saying, not very subtly, Do you like this? We have more where this came from. And hey. It's Navani's now!