robardin

D'oh!!! I got minorly spoiled for some Cosmere details I hadn't really noticed, like the whole thing about Hoid ("Who's that?!"), but in general when I discovered this site I'd read almost every Cosmere work plus The Emperor's Soul, needing to catch up on only the short stories (Forests of Hell, Sixth of the Dusk) for printed stuff. People also dropped mention of White Sand as an unpublished work, which I ignored until I could read the "canonical" graphic novels. Similarly, I have managed to willfully ignore or to maintain official ignorance of anything about Yolen, fain, or aether as coming from unpublished works (though I obviously know the terms, and know the name "Frost" as the target and respondent to two of Hoid's letters and that he is a dragon originally from, and apparently still residing on, a world/planet called Yolen, whence came Hoid and presumably most or all of the 16 Vessels involved in the Shattering), and why I won't read The Way of Kings Prime. Sure it sounds like fun, but I am afraid it would just muddy my head as to what is canonical and what is not, until the whole cake is baked at any rate (which I should be so lucky to live to see, as I am turning 50 years old soon!). I had not figured out that Zahel = Vasher until I had it pointed out to me here, even with the hint about him falling asleep still expecting to hear a voice in his head talking to him; but I definitely picked up immediately on Azure = Vivenna (not that hard once the first equivalence was revealed), same with the three worldhoppers in the Purelake (except of course, at the time I read that scene White Sand had not yet been canonically published, so I did not recognize Baon). Well actually I may not have identified Demoux. The biggest "reveal" moment to me - other than something intentionally epic, like the climactic ending to The Hero of Ages - was near the end of Words of Radiance, when Nalan resurrects a just-killed Szeth and throws a sheathed sword at him that said, would you like to destroy some evil today? (I would like to think that I would have picked up on Zahel = Vasher on a subsequent re-read of WoR, but I saw other people's realization of that here before I did my first re-read of WoR.)

This is what I would have said, as well. It also made me think about the painted Shardplate, which shatters after enough blows, where the missing panels later have to be "regrown" from the largest remaining piece by "feeding it Stormlight". (This was described by Dalinar in TWoK when thinking about pieces of his Plate he left behind at the plateau for the Parshendi to pick up - as long as he got away with "most" of the Plate, his armorers would "win" the entire suit and the Parshendi remnant would fall apart.) So I assume that means painting Shardplate is something that is done each time it is regrown back to a full suit, as what "grows back" would not be painted either. And really, I find the mechanism for "dead Shardplate" even more interesting now that we know what "dead Shardblades" have as their basis since the end of WoR. If a Radiant only gets Plate at the Fourth Ideal, shouldn't the "dead Shardplate" be somehow linked or matched up with a specific dead Shardblade, the one that's the spren for whose bond the Plate extended from?

A Trueself Ferring could store identity into a metalmind and thus be able to create an unkeyed metalmind... But not to use another keyed metalmind, right? And with medallion technology any Misting can compound with one granting the F-power for their metal. Like the medallions granting F-iron for everyone but Wax to be able to lighten themselves for takoff in Wilg - give that to Wax and now he could burn his own ironminds to Compound weight. A Soother with one of the heat medallions could Compound heat, but into a keyed brassmind that only he/she could tap... By means of a medallion granting F-brass.

I would think Mistborn-Ferring is the way to go here if you're selecting an agent to go toe-to-toe with a Fifth Ideal Windrunner, because a Mistborn can burn two extremely useful metals (and you'd therefore need the Mistborn part as a starting point): (1) chromium, to Leech away the Stormlight if the Radiant gets within grabbing distance; (2) copper, where a coppercloud's "investiture blocking" effect I suspect would have... An annoying interaction with Surgebinding for the Windrunner. We have RAFOs about exactly what this interaction might be, but the Coppermind's entry on burning copper (ha) has collected WoBs that a coppercloud would block an Awakener's life sense, block a listener's ability to hear the rhythms of Roshar, and would "affect how spren act" in an unspecified way. What if it meant being unable to appear as a Blade? Hmm! (RoW spoiler: ) That's on top of (3) being able to burn both steel and iron to do the "shrapnel cloud of metal" trick that could wear down the Windrunner's Shardplate and Stormlight healing while also folliowing him/her around as they tried to get away from it, unlike Lashed projectiles aimed at the Mistborn which cannot change trajectory once thrown (though Lashing a cloak with Adhesion to work as a thrown net might be interesting). The Fifth Ideal Windrunner's advantage would mainly be that Shardplate would be very effective protection against a lot of things and for a long time, maximally efficient Stormlight healing factor, and of course, just one good Shardweapon thrust and it's game over for the Mistborn-Ferring. (I considered calling such a person an MFer, then realized, probably best not to do so.) Oh, and I just realized a Windrunner's best defense to the shrapnel cloud: infusing a shield of some kind with gravitation, like Kaladin unconsciously did to draw away Parshendi arrows from his crew to hit the bridge planks instead. It'd be like a magnet sucking up the shrapnel. Except that the Mistborn could just Push/Pull harder to overcome it, it would surely take some time getting used to the adjustments involved. I'd think the more offensively dangerous Ferring attribute to have, which for a M-F would also mean compounding for nigh infinite storage, in this case would be F-steel. A steelmind's speed becomes less useful if it's an airborne duel with the Mistborn Pushing and Pulling on metal to keep aloft, so if I were the Mistborn I'd stay on the ground, even seeking cover, while trying to shrapnel-shred the Windrunner (who's presumably in the sky) and casting as big a coppercloud as I can around us both (if it has a dampening effect on the Radiant spren). And then when the Windrunner got down on the ground to close me, tap that steelmind to zip in close and Leech, Baby, Leech, hopefully without getting a Shardknife in the gut waiting for me. Since I'd be Componding speed, I'd be able to zip in, Leech a bit, and zip out, like a really annoying Mosquito of Investiture Sucking.

Dalinar's own thoughts, when bonding the Stormfather after the Battle of Narak on the "rooftop" of Urithiru. Where the "what you did" that he accuses the Stormfather of, who does not deny it, was: And then the Stormfather basically replies as Honor's remnant he was forced to send the Bondsmith visions to tell Dalinar to prepare to fight Odium by refounding or gathering the Knights Radiant ("speak again the ancient oaths and return to men the Shards they once bore..."), but he personally would prefer that not happen. And clearly, had taken deadly steps towards trying to make that not happen. Yes, he can "only" send highstorms... But sending an unexpected highstorm, with the explicit (and admitted) intention of "washing away" the Alethi army, is hardly "I don't want any part of this", it's "I want to have a part of this, and that part is to try to prevent it even if it seems impossible and involves intentionally trying to cause people's death". The Stormfather was pulling a Nale, basically (not that he cares about killing people in highstorms - "that just a thing that happens", to him).

Oh, it was a bit more than that. As Dalinar considered it, the Stormfather "had actively tried to murder him and his entire army". Syl said as much to Kaladin, "He brought the storm, rushing its pace. He's... broken, Kaladin. He doesn't think any of this [the Nahel bonds, the Final Desolation] should be happening. He wants to end it all, wash everyone away, and try to hide from the future." (As I read it: if the Alethi armies were swept away, even though Sadeas and the majority of other highprinces had not even come to Narak with their armies, the Stormfather hoped perhaps the war would end, the Parshendi would have no further reason to fight, and the Everstorm would not manifest.) And he's certainly very fatalistic in talking to Dalinar after the Battle of Narak. YOU ARE DOOMED. -- GO, BONDSMITH. LEAD YOUR DYING PEOPLE TO FAILURE. ODIUM DESTROYED THE ALMIGHTY HIMSELF. YOU ARE NOTHING TO HIM. That's not Force of Nature talk, that's a sentient mega-spren that knows what is on the cusp of happening and was trying to prevent it and thinks once it happened (the Everstorm) it's Game Over For Mankind.

So how can Malata's spren "be fine with this" (the Diagram going over to Team Odium), or the honorspren still be so huffy and standoffish... Or how could the Stormfather justify sending that unexpected highstorm (as Dalilar reflected, "had actively tried to murder" him and his men) ahead of the Everstorm, to just let the Voidbringers win at the Battle of Narak? Even if he truly believes that Dalinar's Radiants would eventually kill their spren, just as happened in the Recreance and "your kind have brought nothing but death to mine", wouldn't losing 90% of radiant spren to a second Recreance be better than elimination? And conversely - if Odium's victory will still leave Shadesmar and sentient spren around, just in a pre-humanity-on-Roshar way - why would they care so much?

I started a thread on the regular (non-RoW-spoiler) Stormlight Archive forum because it's something one could discuss just from having read through Oathbringer, but it has particular relevance with what we see in RoW that the majority of honorspren are still holding back from forming Nahel bonds (not to mention "Spark" being "just fine" with Malata and the Diagram being on Team Odium). Why do the spren even form Nahel bonds with humans? We know they only started doing so after seeing the Heralds wielding the Honorblades, as Syl and WoBs say that it was done in imitation of what the Blades do (including granding two adjacent Surges per Honorblade/type of Nahel bond). And we know that the Ideals were something Ishar imposed on them as "precepts" to limit or check the growth and use of the Surgebinding powers. But why did the Radiant spren see the need to "help out" the Heralds in that way, in their fight against the Fused and the Unmade and the Thunderclasts and their legions of ordinary singers? If it was because Odium's victory would wipe them out - it's implied in his comments to Dalinar of what he would do upon being released, that he could not "leave behind the splinters" of Honor and Cultivation and "the changes to this realm would be substantial", that perhaps he'd eliminate all the sentient spren as well as the Stormfather and the Nightwatcher... Then why would they not resist him again? Surely even a second Recreance is worth it, if it means saving "a remnant of a remnant" as an alternative to utter destruction.

The ten orders of Knights Radiant only started happening after a few cycles of Desolations, when the spren tried to emulate what Honor had done with the Honorblades and bonded humans. Ishar was surprised by this and "founded the orders" by "giving them precepts" (Ideals?), "to keep their power in check". This implies a couple of things: The Heralds successfully fought the Unmade, the Fused, and Thuderclasts all by themselves for a number of initial Desolations, training normal humans to fight against normal singers in warform or other forms. The spren saw this and wanted to help out. But why? Why would they care whether humans or singers ruled Roshar? Didn't they pre-exist humans arriving as well (as Syl said, some of the older spren had four genders, "because they weren't imagined by humans"!) A pre-Second-Ideal Syl hissed and flew away at Kaladin's mention of Odium's name, which he'd first heard from the Stormfather after he "rode the storm" in a vision. ODIUM REIGNS. Now that Honor is dead and the Oathpact is broken and the Final Desolation is here, we see more and more kinds of Radiant spren risking another Recreance to resist The Enemy and bonding people again. Leaving aside the deeper question of "wait, if Honor was worshiped by the Dawnsingers on Roshar before humans arrived with Odium, how did they switch places in terms of allegiances?", though perhaps it is linked: why did/do the spren fear Odium's victory and want to prevent it? Odium did say to Dalinar that once released, he would not be leaving behind the splinters of Honor and Cultivation - "I can already see where that would go wrong" - and that "the changes to this realm would be substantial". Does that mean he'd somehow eradicate all the sentient spren as well as the Stormfather, Nightwatcher, etc., and the spren know this?

This is very plausible - in which case, the "paired dueling" thing would have a secondary purpose, to take away any obvious urgency that might be imparted by the outnumbering of full Windrunners (who can summon Blades) by Heavenly Ones. They can't use "we're getting killed faster than we can train up!" angle to plea for more honorspren, if the Heavenly Ones are carefully avoiding crossing that line. The Windrunners think it's about honor to the enemy, and the Fused don't mind them thinking it is - I'm sure they enjoy it as well - but I don't think they're holding back from using their advantage of numerical superiority purely out of a sense of fairness, but tactically. I mean when Leshwi first "met" Moash, she was coming down to kill what as far as she knew were simply three or four human refugees, not knowing there would be two Full Shardbearers in their party in Graves and Moash: they were surprised and excited to find the Shardplate in the wagon. Multiple flying Fused ("Heavenly Ones") doing that kind of work? And flying in and killing Graves from behind? Is that honorable in the way that Kaladin is starting to believe that they are? I don't think so.

I like what you posted, and agree to the points made - I didn't mean to say the Heavenly Ones are "evil treacherous snakes", I was mainly rebutting (rebuttaling? speaking to?) posts from other people (perhaps not in this thread) that I felt made a few too many parallels between them and the Windrunners based on the surface similarities in their behavior. And my main observation still stands: the way that Leshwi presented herself to Kaladin, for example appearing to be angry at another (non-H1) Fused attacking human civilians to the point of breaking off her duel with him and telling him to go set things right, feels very much like she knows what he, Kaladin Stormblessed, would like to see in an enemy and is feeding it to him with a spoon. (Also recall that her close relationship with Vyre/Moash means she has particular insight into Kaladin's mind as well.) That, on top of what we see Moash having done in the manor, as well what Moash proceeds to do with/to Kaladin (not attack him, but mess with his head), feels like the real game plan involves... Well, involves messing with Kaladin's head, not just to attack and to kill him. For a reason we don't know yet.

I would have thought so, except they can't quite be doing it like Dalinar who is wielding a Surge to form the Connection. I guess if Worldhoppers who aren't Invested (magic wielders) can do it, a Fused could as well, apart for Surgebinding. But that would imply anybody in the Cosmere could do it too, any time, which seems a bit of a stretch. And would be temporary, like the Mistborn reference @Frustration gave - it would only last the duration of the magical effect. (Similarly, I don't think Dalinar permanently gained the ability to speak Azish or Thaylen - I assume it wears off and he needs to re-form the Connection each time?) The "awakened parshmen" spoke the languages they grew up hearing and understanding from their human masters, as well as the culture they passively absorbed. Or it could be a one-time case of a "Connection void" that really wanted to be filled all of a sudden getting filled with whatever was handy when the blockage was cleared, like air rushing into a vacuum, from a Cosmere-magic-physics POV.

Not every hero's story is THE hero's journey; but it is still a journey! (Before Destination!)

Yes, the Fused do have some kind of concern for their people, though they do view them very much as "resources" (I mean, they reincarnate into their bodies...!). And I'd say what Kaladin sees of the Heavenly Ones' conduct in battle echoes more of the kind of honor that he saw from the pre-Everstorm Parshendi on the Shattered Plains. But that whole encounter Kaladin had in Hearthstone, with Leshwi going after - and then releasing - Sigzil, pulling back from fighting Kaladin and gesturing for him to go and stop another Fused from what he was doing, which in turn resulted in him being inside the Hearthstone manor to encounter Vyre the way that he did when Vyre should be under her command... It feels very much like Leshwi, who let's not forget is incredibly ancient, crafty, skilled, and filled with purpose to triumph over humankind, is playing a very deep or long game with Kaladin, for reasons we have yet to see. Anyone who goes "maybe the Heavenly Ones will realize they have more in common with the Windrunners than the other Fused and switch sides, or join up with Venli for Team Third Way for a Better Roshar!" I think is reading a little too much on the surface with her. Let's not forget that unlike the Heralds, it seems that Odium could and would simply "reclaim that which gives [a Fused] persistent life" if one displeases or goes against him, as he threatened Turash with at Thaylen Fields. It's not like the Herald Nale breaking the Oathpact and ultimately full on going over to Team Odium, yet still being immortal. The sane Fused like Leshwi are probably the most committed to the cause; the insane ones may have gone insane after so many Desolations exactly because they could no longer fully go along with the program, but Odium hasn't released them, so back into the spin cycle they go!

The Fused are returned "gods", the re-embodied spirits of singers from past Desolations, even many or all such cycles (it's not clear that singers can "join up" as a new Fused recruit or if all the Fused are of the same original generation of singers). And the last Desolation, not counting the False Desolation which didn't feature the Fused but simply "forms of power" and use of Voidlight being granted to singers - and even if it did count, it was so long ago as to predate the Recreance - the last Desolation was Aharietiam, over five thousand years ago. Even if the Fused had learned human speech over time, when the Desolations were coming quicker and quicker between cycles, their knowledge of human language should be way, way out of date, right? How was mutual intelligibility not lost? And it's not some kind of Connection based translation going on, or they wouldn't need Venli in Envoyform when speaking to former parshmen who only spoke human languages. And it's not that only some Fused can do Connection-based conversation, because we see Fused who are able to communicate in Alethi but are users of Surges that preclude also having the kind of Connection that Dalinar uses (e.g., Leshwi the Heavenly One, with the same two Surges as the Windrunners, being able to speak with Moash).

Oh yeah, one more thing I realized was subtly dropped on us in Chapter 10. Dalinar was concerned about the paired dueling that the Windrunners have taken to doing with the Heavenly Ones: So... Not only does Kaladin recognize Leshwi as his counterpart as the leader of the Heavenly Ones, even being "frenemies" enough to realize (at the end of Chapter 6) that he was "letting her get too close" while still in a fight where they both had bloodied the other because they appeared to share outrage at the "Teleporting Fused" brutalizing non-combatant civilians on the ground below, he also knows her on a first name basis? We know Leshwi speaks Alethi, so she must have introduced herself to him at some point. I would really love to read that flashback! As far as the Heavenly Ones "having honor" - it's implied by that scene at the end of Chapter 6 that Leshwi disapproved of the Teleporting Fused brutalizing non-combatants, to the point of halting her fight with Kaladin and indicating that he should go stop it; and yet Vyre, the last we saw in Oathbringer when Moash was given the Honorblade to "join [the Heavenly Ones] in the sky", is under her command. And he was already in the burning manor house, having killed shackled two civilian prisoners with his Blade, not to mention Roshone. OK, killing Roshone may be a personal vendetta thing with Moash, but killing Jeber and the other man doesn't seem like something that fits with that picture of the Heavenly Ones being against brutalizing civilians. Did he do that entirely on his own, or was he acting on orders from, or at least a common plan with, Leshwi? It certainly seems possible that Leshwi is lulling Kaladin, leading him on with a false idea of "we are counterparts to the Windrunners!", towards some kind of long game trap? EDIT to add: furthering my suspicion as to the supposed "Windrunner ethos" of the Heavenly Ones: when we first hear from Leshwi firsthand, talking to Moash in the sky in Oathbringer Ch. 54 (a detail that also puzzles me and I raised as a separate topic in the main SA forum): Sacrificing her own people as expendable slaves, just like Sadeas did with his bridge crews... That is very, very un-Windrunner, isn't it?

Well the thing is, there are more things about Maya's "revival" that do not extend to other Shardblades. For example, even before Dalinar opened the Perpendicularity, through which Adolin emerged from Shadesmar to Thaylen Fields and into Renarin's healing hands for his gut wound, we saw Maya as a deadeye spren in Shadesmar act to save Adolin from being finished off by the Fused that dealt him that gut wound. Screaming and leaping onto and clawing at the surprised Fused, who stabbed Maya but to no effect. You can't explain that as an effect of Dalinar UNITING the Realms, which hadn't happened yet - that this particular "deadeye" was no longer quite so dead, and specifically motivated to some semblance of life in defense of her bonded bearer in Adolin. Which no other deadeye has ever been known, I would guess, to suddenly regain volition, going by what Notum said about them (including his own father).

I wasn't sure if I should put this in the general Stormlight Archive forum or the RoW Spoiler one; since I'd like to hear people's thoughts based on what we've seen/learned in the first 9 chapters (so far) of Rhythm of War, I put it here. At the beginning of Words of Radiance, all the freed slave members of Bridge Four - the majority of them - prepare to get a glyph tattoo of "freedom" written over their brand of slavery, to indicate their freed status. First up is Hobber, who spontaneously insists on adding the glyphs for "Bridge" and "Four" under his freedom tattoo, and this idea is immediately seized upon by everybody in Bridge Four. All the former slaves get the "Freedom, Bridge Four" tattoo written over their slave brand, and to Kaladin's surprise, even the non-slave members like Teft, Rock, and (after some resistance from the tattooist) Shen/Rlain the parshman get the same tattoo on their forehead as well, even though they have no slave brand to cover, and even though that's what everybody else would assume (that a forehead tattoo of FREEDOM indicated former slavery). Except for Moash. He gets the "Freedom, Bridge Four" tattoo, but on his upper arm instead of his forehead. And of course except for Kaladin, who got the tattoo but whose Stormlight healing rejects the tattoo because at some level, he thinks of the version of himself without the Sadeas princedom slavery and shash brands as "dead". As of the end of Oathbringer, nearly all the members of Bridge Four who got that tattoo (other than Dabbid and Rlain) can draw Stormlight as being at least squires (Moash by virtue of Jezrien's Honorblade). One presumes they didn't lose their Bridge Four tattoos from drawing in Stormlight... ...Except for Moash? Does he still view himself as having the right to bear "Freedom, Bridge Four" on his arm? Kaladin recalls with fury that Moash had given him the Bridge Four salute after killing Elhokar, "as if he in any way deserved to claim that privilege". And there was that filmy version of Windrunner Moash that came out of him "like an afterimage" when Renarin brought the Light into the burning room with them... Is it just what I'd like to picture, or did that afterimage come out of his upper arm? And I wonder, do the newer members of Bridge Four get the tattoo, like Lyn or Laran, or is that a special mark of the Original Crew who ever actually carried the physical bridge as opposed to being a member of it as a Windrunner division? Does it also say FREEDOM or just the "Bridge Four" part?

You miserable human! You've betrayed your oaths once already! No, I didn't! Honest! I was always going to the palace to protect Elhokar, but I... I ran out of Stormlight! The chull wagon broke down, and I didn't have enough spheres to hitch a ride! My uniform was getting repaired! My parents suddenly came in from Hearthstone! Someone stole my spear! There was an unexpected highstorm! A terrible chasmfiend! A swarm of flying cremlings! IT WASN'T MY FAULT, I SWEAR TO HONOR!!!

As Kaladin tells Teft after he'd had sworn the Third Ideal despite his guilt over his pawned Bridge Four coat being used to steal the Honorblade, force open the Oathgate, and kill members of Bridge Four while doing so... "It doesn't change us, Teft. We're still who we are." Teft still has his addiction, his longing for firemoss. And Kaladin's depression is not something he will just "gets over" at some point, neither is it something Stormlight or a Nahel bond will "fix". It's likely something he's had, and will continue to have to deal with, for his whole life. It's not something beaten into him as a slave, or a reaction to Amaram's betrayal, you kno; he had these moods already even back in Hearthstone, when he recalls that Tien could lighten even his darkest days. He meant the depression. As for his particular extra funk in the early chapters of RoW, they do seem related to what he considers his failure to be "strong enough" to swear the Fourth Ideal. I (like many others) have the feeling the Fourth Ideal will not be about strength, about gritting one's teeth and pushing through or forbearing through a trial, but about letting something go. And as per an earlier post of mine in this thread, I now think it's very possible, even hoping, that Lopen will be the first Windrunner to swear the Fourth Ideal, and be an inspirational leader for others (including Kaladin) to do so as well. Because advancing in the Ideals is not a competition or a race to a finishing line ("Yes, Fifth Ideal - FIRST!!!"), but about personal growth.

I both agree and disagree. Yes, I think Kaladin as the Windrunner par excellence for the reader must ultimately achieve all five Ideals, as a meta/writerly thing - almost a kind of contract with the reader, assuming he doesn't die a shocking death suddenly a la Game of Thrones, which hasn't been Brandon's thing up until now. However I think it is very possible, and possibly a better story, for him to be "overtaken" at some point on the Checklist of Radiant Ideals. Just as it was Rock's "turn to save him" at Thaylen Fields, perhaps it's another Windrunner's turn to help guide and encourage Kaladin forward. Put like that, it kind of sounds like it should be Lopen.

Well, it was put out there by the Stormfather whose POV has likely changed since it was issued, hey? The bigger risk would be that Shadesmar appeared to be largely, and increasingly, under the thumb of the Fused, when last we saw it. Simply reaching Lasting Integrity might prove a challenge.

This. The only reason Kaladin and Syl wouldn't already be sent on this rather critical mission would be because they were more needed in the battlefield. Which Dalinar is now saying quite clearly is not the case. "Hello, Lasting Integrity! I'm Kaladin Stormblessed, and this here is Sylphrena, the Ancient Daughter, and we're the Fabulous Blues Bonded. We came here tonight to get you all back on board, because we're getting the BAND back together again.... We're on a mission from gods!"

Probably more like it's the standard "long, but not too long" time allotted for making a major decision on Roshar where things come in tens. Like giving someone "a week to think about it" in our world.

Well he almost did swear the Fourth Ideal in Shadesmar in Oathbringer, and windspren started swirling around him. Yet at the same time, he wasn't able to summon Syl as a Blade in Shadesmar. So... Something would happen, but would it result in him being encased in living Shardplate, I'm guessing not.