robardin

You hardly have to adopt a whole new religion to pick up new swears...! The percent of Jews I know who routinely say "Jesus Christ!" as an exclamation exceeds the Christians who do, and it's probably partly or largely due the fact that they don't consider it blasphemy, you know? For that matter, in a Mistborn reference and partial spoiler for The Final Empire - If anything, if that is the source of it, for Dalinar to have picked it up implies he's spent a fair amount of time talking to the Heralds, and for them to have been saying it a lot as well. Ha ha.

FWIW, I did a text search and the only mention of "The God Beyond" in SA works was in Words of Radiance, in the Shallan flashback when "the messenger" (Hoid) who came to give Heleran's message at the Davar household tells her the story about two blind men debating their respective abilities to know beauty, and one of them says he prays "to the God Beyond" to restore his sight. And in this chapter, Dalinar reflects on the semi-usefulness of talking to the Heralds, one mad and the other mostly so, but yeah perhaps they swear by the God Beyond, so if one of their erstwhile Vorin gods (Heralds) swears by a god "beyond" Honor as the Almighty, who are they not to follow suit?

I wonder if the Heavenly Ones' "duel-istic" approach to fighting the Windrunners will change once Leshwi realizes Kaladin is no longer coming to battle. She appears to be their leader in a similar way to Kaladin leading the Windrunners, and surely she knows about Kaladin's history and relationship to Moash/Vyre; what if she views the way they've been fighting as a kind of personal extension of a struggle with Kaladin, on multiple levels? And with no Kaladin... It becomes warfare as usual, where as Kaladin noted they are actually outnumbered as well as out-resourced for replacement time in an all-out Heavenly Ones vs. Windrunners type of scenario? Yes, and no. Remember he also berated and commanded Bridge Four back in the chasms to get over "Shen" being a parshman, and to accept him as a full and equal member. This is similar... Of course, giving commands "as your highmarshal" to a spren seemed a little odd, but it was based on Syl's suggestion that "honorspren respect rank and look to you for authority", so I guess that's what Kaladin sounds like on the rare occasion that he actually does pull rank. As far as spren being "commanded" to bond with a specific person not of their personal choice, we have seen that before with another order - Wyndle said several times early on how he wished "the Ring" hadn't matched him up with Lyft, who kept calling him a Voidbringer and all that. But ultimately it's surely up to the individual spren to do the actual bonding.

So, no Windrunner has yet reached the Fourth Ideal - I had wondered if Teft or Lopen might have "overtaken" Kaladin after a year or so. Kaladin knows the Words he couldn't say. And still cannot say. And is convinced he probably will never be able to say. Wow, that hurt to read. But it makes sense. Kaladin freezing up on the battlefield is the worst thing possible for the Windrunners to see. I assume his "breaking out" will require saying the Fourth Ideal...? Too obvious?

The Returned are certainly "gods" in the same way that the Fused and the Heralds are, or even to a large extend that The Lord Ruler was. They're immortal beings elevated from mortal origins by divine power, made immortal for a purpose imparted to them by a Shard, a purpose that involves going around ordinary mortals and making them do (or to prevent them from doing) certain actions, to further that purpose. Vivenna can objectively acknowledge that, but that doesn't mean she worships them now. It's like how Jasnah is fully capable of acknowledging Honor, Cultivation, and Odium as "gods", as the divine sources of supernatural powers and effects - but ones that can be killed or destroyed, that Roshar pre-existed them, and that dealing with them as such doesn't require worshiping them in the sense of "doing whatever they want me to do, even if said directly to my face rather than by proxy or received tradition passed down by other people, is by definition the right thing to do". Or how Szeth acknowledged Nale as "Nin, the Herald of Justice" when he named himself "one of your gods" to him, yet also tells him to his face in Yeddaw that Nale was "wrong; so, so wrong" about the return of Voidbringbers and the Final Desolation not being real. In terms of "what has happened to Vivenna's religion", the better question would to wonder what Vivenna now thinks of the principles and precepts of the Austrism she was raised with. Already in Warbreaker she moves past it enough to become an Awakener; by the time we see her again in Oathbringer as Azure, she's had ample time for Vasher to have explained to her the meaning behind his cryptic comments about how the followers of Austre didn't used to hold Breath as sacred and collecting them from people for Awakening purposes as profane. He's lived long enough to see that doctrine arise, and quite possibly to have been there when Austre was alive or (most likely) was a Returned in the first place. Talking to someone who is literally older than the founding of your religion and personally knew the people who founded it, even the one it venerates as divine, and possibly in pre-divine form - well, that must be pretty -- well, it's like a Rosharan talking to Hoid, I guess, eh? ("Tanavast was a fine fellow, bought me drinks once, but he was not the Almighty.")

Also remember how Lopen expressed the Second Ideal. Not in a combat situation, but while "protecting" a wounded amputee Thaylen from despair. Emotional protection. He screams to the sky about how he'd begged and tried to level up during the battle, "when we were all like going to die", and the Stormfather replies, YOU WEREN'T QUITE READY. That is a classic Lopen comedic scene, in a way, but the Stormfather doesn't pull practical jokes about Ideals. Lopen really wasn't ready, not until he found the right way, his way, to express it. I hope we see him swear his Third Ideal in Dawnshard. Perhaps he will have to bolster someone's morale in a way he hates doing...?

And when we see Shards destroyed or Splintered, we see the physical bodies of the former Vessels reappear (Leras, Ati, presumably this happened with Tanavast, Aona, Skai, and Uli Da when killed by Odium?)... What happened with Adonalsium?

Unknown as of yet, but I always imagined the creation of Scadrial as happening soon after the Shattering - kind of like how Aona and Skai "partnered up" on Sel.

And yet it would be a classic case of Sanderson Misdirection, wouldn't it? It is a little bit odd for her to refer to Lord Harms as Wax's "father"... Even meaning father-in-law... When he hadn't actually married Steris yet. It seems quite possible that Wax's father was about as dead as his uncle Edwarn and sister Telsin turned out to be, possibly for similar reasons... And Wax "wouldn't be Lord Ladrian" either if just Edwarn were known to still be alive and to claim the title. And to put it in further context, this is what the exchange is between Bleeder and Wax: That phrasing, "haven't even murdered your father yet" is also puzzling (or a clue), as if that were a prerequisite step to take in her plans before killing the governor. As we find out later, Bleeder had already killed Innate and was taking his place, right? Making speeches that inflamed, rather than quelled, popular resentment, and so on. So either Bleeder is just lying about who she has or hasn't already killed, to mess with Wax's mind, or she means "kill the governor" as in "to stop taking his form so people think he's still alive". So when was she planning on faking Governor Innate's (second) death? And did she mean to imply that she has Wax's father's bones and has posed as him recently, as she had Bloody Tan? No rusting way, right?

We don't know how long there have been "research universities" in Silverlight - we know Khriss helped to found one of several, whether that was the first or latest such University we don't know, but at least one of them is therefore younger than her knowledge base, yeah? So why assume the research they do leads to weaponry? At that point of Cosmere history, in fact - the end of the Final Empire - I would say that her native Taldain flintlock pistol may be the most advanced non-Investiture hand weapon available, of the worlds we've seen. Rashek had squashed gunpowder based weapons on Scadrial for a thousand years, and the concurrent or previous scenes we've read that take place on Sel, Nalthis, Roshar, etc., have nothing like that. (And her original Taldain level of technology (as seen in that pistol) would encompass an understanding of Newtonian mechanics about mass and momentum and so on, as she talks about with Wax.) But I do agree that Silverlight has not done "research for thousands of years" - that is different from having collected knowledge of events dating back thousands of years. For the latter, all you need is a trusted, verifiable source... Hoid? Frost? Some kind of Rashek-style plaque left behind by Adonalsium? ("If you are reading this, know that I have been Shattered...") We just don't know enough yet about this area. Actually, we have WoBs referenced in the Coppermind that Khriss is (a) of the 17th Shard (the Frost contingent) and (b) the most Cosmere-aware (of past and current events) of any character, including Hoid, so she's gone beyond Frost and Hoid both. Maybe she did find an Adonalsium plaque! Or is just more up on "current events" because she 'hops around so much.

I seriously doubt she predates the Shattering, as she is still living her "original life" (before becoming Cosmere-aware) in the events of White Sand, is she not? She hadn't even ever been to Dayside on Taldain, or seen Investiture based magic like Sand Mastery, much less gone off-world yet. And she was involved in setting up a (formal) University at Sliverlight, one of multiple (so maybe she's helped to found the newest one), but Silverlight itself is the designation for a city of some kind for living humans dwelling full-time in the Cognitive Realm that (presumably) already existed. It's not like the town grew up around the University, or at least I wouldn't think so (admittedly, we have very little to go on here).

As scholars from Silverlight, a place and whose "universities" are only hinted at in the Ars Arcanum entries (or Arcanum Unbounded) and WoBs, what Khriss and Nazh know do not necessarily come from direct experience. When she speaks to Kelsier in Mistborn: Secret History, she knows the names of the Vessels of Preservation and Ruin and informs Kelsier that they are two of sixteen Shards that are "pieces of God", Adonalsium, with the rest on other planets. She obviously wasn't around for the Shattering, so why be surprised that she also knows the history of Scadrial? As a second order question, one might ask how did anybody in Silverlight ever gain that knowledge to pass along at their universities? I would say someone like Hoid or Frost are prime suspects... Though the idea that Silverlight itself could predate the Shattering is also possible, I suppose.

Define "redeemed". I think he will have a different arc than Amaram - get puffed up, fall in with Odium to lose the pain of having made some choices he felt pained about, take up Shards against Dalinar and Kaladin, and then to get killed while screaming NOOOOOO I REGRET NOTHING while flinching. The obvious reason being, we already saw that arc in Amaram, yeah? On the other hand, it seems really hard for Kaladin and the others in Bridge Four and on Team Dalinar to just "get over" what Moash did. Attempting to kill Kaladin, "my captain forever", with his own rightful and gifted-to-him Shards; attempting to, and later succeeding, in killing Elhokar, while helping Odium's forces seize Kholinar; murdering Jezrien and taking up his Honorblade; and most lately, killing Roshone and two other bystander Hearthstone citizens in cold blood while nearly talking to Kaladin into suicide. On the other other hand, based on that "filmy" version of himself that we see still exists within him (likely as a self-image) from Renarin's burst of Light, he's not irredeemably un-Radiant. If he could ever get out from under Odium taking his pain. I really like the idea put forward in another thread, that perhaps he will join up with Venli to form a Third Faction, the Listeners, independent of Odium yet also rejecting the rule of Alethkar and the other Kingdoms of Men that Dalinar ultimately still represents. The New Rosharans!

Oooh... I hadn't thought of this story arc, but now I really like it. What if his redemption is to become a Third Faction with Venli? Why does he bear an ancient singer's name in Moash (and what did it mean)?

One-time situational skimming of time, such as Marasi did with Miles or as you posit, delaying time for help to arrive (basically the same scenario), is one thing... But routinely skimming, like pulsing away every other day or more, that's something else. And for "centuries" to pass in your adult lifespan, you'd have to skim at least at a 4:1 ratio. While you would get to see much more of history and possibly get richer, you would also rapidly lose touch with everybody else not in your time skipping cohort: your parents, siblings, children, friends, etc., or even other "skimmers" who were simply skimming at a lesser rate. Let's say you spent 3 days "out" for every one day "in", starting at age 20, and your natural lifespan saw you live to be 80. So those last 60 years of your lifespan, you stretched out to cover 4x = 240 years, and you die 260 years after you were born. Meanwhile, your friends who were also 20 years old at that time who also lived to about 80 years old would die in 60 more years - in which time to you, only 15 years have passed. Or if you have children who don't share your abilities... They'll become 20 year old adults in just five of your years, and if they lived to be 80 years old, you'll see die in 20 years. Seems like a terrible and lonely thing to consider doing, if you ask me. For what is life for, if not spending that time with the people you care about? (This is explored a bit via the "somec" technology in Orson Scott Card's collection The Worthing Saga, BTW - a good read)

In another RoW Spoilers thread I theorized that perhaps Shallan's deeper secret is that she was not her mother's child - that her happy memories of being with her mother are fabrications - and that was why her mother found it so easy to try to kill her "suddenly". Was it sudden? What did she mean by "one of THEM?" When she reflected to herself that "even Shallan is a lie" in this chapter, I started to really wonder, as you did here, how deep that goes... Yeesh.

"I was sorry to hear about your brother." -- what else would she say about something she had no hand in, and from her POV was 4+ year old news? And her not commenting on Kaladin's slave brands is actually a plus mark to me. Everybody else - the lighteyed and darkeyed guards alike, Roshone, even to some extent his own father, were like, deserter! With a shash! Dangerous! Killer on the loose! - Laral is focused on dealing with the people and their problems. If you go back and read her "entrance" in Ch. 7 of Oathbringer, she meets Radiant Kaladin after walking in (and after hearing) what he says to Roshone about the Everstorm, the parshmen transforming into Voidbringers, and the necessity to build homes that slope in both directions. Roshone, already in shock, slumps down morosely; and then from behind him, Laral says, "We'll do it." And then dresses him down for damaging her floor. This after he'd noticed with a bit of surprise that the guards who'd refused to fight him on Roshone's direct command, would not bring him maps from the study without the lady's approval. "Whined?" Far from it. She is setting parameters as to who's in charge in her domain - her. That's how she got that respect from the guards and the people in the first place. Yes, her first priority is not Kaladin's happiness or emotional well-being. That hardly makes her a bad person. It makes her a leader in her own right, the true leader of the people of Hearthstone. And what we see of Roshone (all too briefly) in RoW where he finally seems to be coming around to being one himself, is likely due to her influence, not Kaladin punching him in the face.

Ah, like that scene in The Matrix where Neo just uploads the mastery of martial arts straight into his mind? The problem for tapping an unsealed coppermind for that sort of thing, to me, would be the retention of it. What if you "forgot" the memory after the tapping was done, because it wasn't really yours to begin with?

You do have that, most likely. For the same reason I stopped memorizing anybody's phone number or address since circa 1998. I have a device in my pocket at all times that does that for me. Funny thing about short-term vs. long-term memory though - I still remember all the contact info I'd already memorized up until that point of my adult life, like those of my closest high school friends circa 1988. I can still remember the (parents') home phone numbers from back then for at least five people who I could not even tell you their email address now without pulling out my phone or logging in to a computer.

Also noteworthy is that we've seen a few other cases of Regrowth based healing, and none of them visibly showed a "perfected version" of the target being healed, especially not one visible to people other than the two involved. Nor even the other times that Renarin has healed Adolin; at Thaylen Fields, when Renarin was Supercharged and healed him after he crawled out from under a building caved in by a Thunderclast, he experienced it only as a "burst of healing, like cold water in his veins." So this effect may require another contributing factor. Maybe something subjective on the part of Renarin. That time Adolin saw a perfected version of himself he was actually in the act of comforting Renarin, who was worried about how he would (or would not) fulfill anybody's, particularly Dalinar's, expectations of being Radiant.

True, and yet to give @Tamara leeway, that doesn't mean she has to like her. I mean, you could say we've seen The Stump from Edgedancer show similar no-nonsense, stern-but-doing-good personality traits in Yeddaw. That doesn't mean you'd want to get into a relationship with her (or to root for a favorite character to do so)!

Well, what we saw of Laral in TWoK flashbacks were fairly flat because they were from a youthful Kaladin's POV, where she's largely a figure to try to impress, to feel betrayed by (when she goes along with Rillir's dismissal of Kaladin as a darkeyed child), or to rescue from a clearly mismatched marriage to a much older Roshone. We've only glimpsed seeing an adult Laral as herself (as she would see/act herself) in two or three Hearthstone passages in Oathbringer and early RoW chapters. And I like what I see. Whether I like that as a match for Kaladin, I have actually no opinion on that - but I do find her evident strength of will and character admirable.

Not advocating for the match specifically, but why wouldn't that description match Laral? We have no idea what Laral feels or ever felt for Kaladin at a personal level, other than possibly a childhood crush kind of way. Her reaction to his comment in Oathbringer that he'd always imagined coming back and "saving her from this" (her marriage to Roshone) was full of independence, as was her distinct lack of awe in seeing him come back as a Shardbearer and thus of at least the fourth dahn. ("Shardbearer or not, another word like that and I'll have you thrown out of my house." Strong words from someone who had no Shards and would be hard pressed to literally throw a truly unwilling Shardbearer out of her house - but she also knows Kaladin would not resort to violence to defy such an order, and is really communicating how upset she is at his presumptive attitude.) As for her trying to "fix" Kaladin, there's a difference between actively trying to mold or change him into something else "better", and supporting him by providing a stable base to lean on. She clearly resents it when someone does the first to herself, I don't think she's the type to then do that to others. As for the second kind of behavior, when we see how she carries herself and interacts with others in the singer-ruled Hearthstone in the early chapters of RoW, I think she's definitely exhibiting that, and in spades. Oh, and Syl likes her.

I was wondering if one could stack or serialize memories in an unsealed coppermind from different people. Or even from the same person. I'm sure the different memories can be stored in the same coppermind, what I mean is, can the ordering be specified or indexed? To form a narrative? It would make for an interesting twist if someone tapped an unsealed coppermind coin and saw some events play out spanning several hours or days, that they misinterpreted because they didn't "play them back" in the right order until noticing some detail like the sun's shadow moving in the wrong direction.

Yeah, since this book is supposed to feature a lot more from the listener's POVs in the flashbacks (Venli and Eshonai), I've always assumed the title Rhythm of War referred either to one of the songs of lore of the listeners, or else to the "rhythm of Roshar" they attune to when fighting in warform, that Kaladin and others describe when engaging them in The Way of Kings.