robardin

I hate Moash so much right now, which is why I would love to see Sanderson pull off a redemption arc, because writing it would certainly be beyond me to do well or convincingly. But all the pieces are there. Moash misses Bridge Four. He is tormented by his betrayal of Kaladin. He is still proud of his time with them, invoking Bridge Four as he brought down Leshwi, refusing to burn his arm patch. And his protecting, training, and taking leadership of the small band of former parshmen who were being punished for harboring Kaladin, was very reminiscent of what Kaladin himself had down with Bridge Four. But he had moved to kill Kaladin, a man he owed everything. He broke his promise that Kaladin was "his captain, forever". A captain who'd ordered him to protect the king, Elhokar, who instead he succeeded in killing, while saluting Kaladin with their special gesture. And then he killed Jezrien, the greatest Herald, while knowing who he was, taking up his Honorblade in the service of Odium. Can any man fall so far? And yet Szeth is now Dalinar's bodyguard, "the storming Assassin in White". If Dalinar can essentially forgive the man who wielded the Blade that killed his brother, could he do the same regarding Elhokar and Jezrien? Would it require Moash to take Jezrien's place in the Oathpact, if that even were possible or meaningful at this point?

If you are thinking about a certain extremely powerful and experienced Returned Awakener known to be on Roshar specifically for a "diet of Investiture" in Stormlight, there is a WoB that he has attempted Awakening with it but has been unsuccessful. Which doesn't rule out someday figuring out a trick he hasn't got down yet, of course. And... A Lifeless spren? Whoa. I'd think something reanimated with Awakening that way would have to have been something that been alive in the Physical Realm originally. As Syl tells Kaladin when he revives her, spren are ideas given sentience and can't be killed the same way a living creature is, only forgotten or abandoned as a concept.

I am very interested to see Lopen reach the Third Ideal. We never got to see Teft express his Second Ideal of the Windrunners, but it was probably similar to Kaladin's: I will protect those who cannot protect themselves, in the context of a physical rescue (Kaladin with the rescue of Dalinar's forces from Sadeas' abandonment). Lopen implied that he had tried really hard to speak the Second Ideal to "level up" during the Battle of Thaylen Fields to no avail, only to have his Words Accepted while casually relating that story to an injured Thaylen who'd lost his right arm. He demanded of the Stormfather, "What? NOW? Why didn't you listen earlier? We were, sure, all about to die and things!", and received the reply, "YOU WEREN'T QUITE READY." That wasn't (just) a light, comic moment: the Stormfather doesn't pull pranks or joke around. At all, never mind about Accepting Ideals. It's that Lopen's natural expression of "protecting" other people is via emotional support, preventing despair and giving hope. We saw that even as he was a one-armed water carrier for a doomed bridgerunning crew.

So I went back and searched all the published Stormlight e-books for mentioning of "Dawnshard". The Way of Kings: Ch. 19, Shallan talking to Jasnah about the "Assuredness Movement" in scholarship: "A mythological treasure, Brightness, much like the Dawnshards or the Honorblades." Ch. 36, chapter heading: "Taking the Dawnshard, known to bind any creature voidish or mortal, he crawled up the steps crafted for Heralds, ten strides tall apiece, toward the grand temple above." (From The Poem of Ista, "with no modern explanation of what these Dawnshards are.") Ch. 75, in one of Honor's bequeathed visions of the destruction of Kholinar, where Dalinar finally realizes that it's a one-way playback: Words of Radiance: There is literally no use of the word "Dawnshard". However, at the point in Ch. 71 where Shallan notices the pattern of the destruction on the Shattered Plains reminds her of "patterns made by sand on a plate", as from Kabsal's demonstration to her of cymatics, I noted at the time as "Hmm, Dawnshards in action?" Arcanum Unbounded (which includes Edgedancer): no mention. Oathbringer: only the Stormfather's description given in detail earlier in this thread, of how Honor "raved about the Dawnshards" to bring about the Recreance. The "Poem of Ista" implies that a Dawnshard is an object to be physically taken, one that "binds any creature voidish or mortal". But this same poem describes a temple with steps "crafted for Heralds, ten strides tall apiece", where we now know that the Heralds are actually of ordinary human stature, so the whole passage could be complete fancy. Unless it was a temple specifically for Jezrien or Nalan, who could fly up the steps. And what would this "Ista" (presumably the "he" in question) be intending to do with the Dawnshard once he ascended to the temple, anyway? Jasnah does note in her commentary of this that Dawnshards are mentioned often in early mythologies, but largely ignored by later scholars... Perhaps as if information about them has been expunged, and discussion of them suppressed, by a Herald who might be working at the Palaeneum. Setting that snippet aside, then, what do we know or can infer? The Recreance of the Knights Radiant happened after the abdication of Oathpact by all the Heralds except Taln. The visions were recorded by Honor after the Recreance. We know this because he includes the Recreance in one of them. He had "raved", "while dying", to the Recreance-era Radiants that they would inevitably destroy Roshar with Surgebinding, mentioning the Dawnshards in that context. So Honor's "dying" took long enough in mortal time to span the Recreance, and then to record the visions he left the Stormfather. And yet, he tells the post-Recreance Bondsmith-to-come (Dalinar), that the Stormfather was to give these visions after he was Splintered, to refound the Knights Radiant. He notes that going champion-vs.-champion against Odium "could work for you", then regretfully reflects, "without the Dawnshards... Well, I have done what I can", which could mean either "you really would've been best off to enter that CvC armed with the Dawnshards", or that "if you had them you wouldn't need to go the CvC route, but here we are, so CvC is the only good option left". Either way, it means Honor didn't think it's possible for Dalinar to find/get the Dawnshards (not in time, at least). Making his last, dying gambit to get a new Bondsmith in a position to refound the Radiants just a few years ahead of the True Desolation ("I WAS REQUIRED TO SEND THOSE VISIONS ONCE THE TIME ARRIVED. THE ALMIGHTY DEMANDED IT OF ME."), without the Heralds and without the Dawnshards, and to make a good enough showing of it that Dalinar can get Odium to accept a CvC challenge. So something doesn't add up. If Honor was on-his-deathbed "promising" that the Knights Radiant, possibly because of the desertion of the nine Heralds, would destroy Roshar with Surgebinding and the Dawnshards... Why was he subsequently keen on having Dalinar refound them, while also saying pretty firmly that Dalinar will be without the Dawnshards? Now, the Stormfather describes the Dawnshards as "ancient weapons used to destroy the Tranquiline Halls"; doesn't that suggest them as "weapons" a la Shardblades, as the Poem of Ista also implies? Maybe. But just using the term "Tranquiline Halls" (a Vorinist one) could suggest he's using human words/concepts drawn from his bond with Dalinar or earlier humans. Besides, humans can be crafted into a weapon. Just ask Szeth. It's also worth remembering that Dalinar has had a number of visions that he initially thought were from Honor, but that the Stormfather later disavows. The one of Nohadon measuring grain, for example. Maybe some of the inconsistencies are coming from Odium faking or tampering with a vision?

I suddenly had the idea for a comedic character who makes a living faking being a Smoker for hire, since most people hiring him are just rich nobles paranoid about getting Soothed or Rioted without their knowledge and his "coppercloud" is providing a placebo effect. And Mistings generally can't really call him on it either, since a normal Seeker couldn't detect him burning copper. And the rare times someone detects Allomancy with bronze from someone he was supposed to be shielding, he makes up some lame excuse as to why he ran out of copper, or rusts, he must've got sold some vial of bronze by mistake, or he'd unintentionally stopped burning copper briefly when he had a sneezing fit due to allergies, sorry!

I think the Honorblades being described as "far less efficient" than a Surgebinder of advanced Ideals is not some kind of design flaw on Honor's part, but an intentional limitation. The Heralds were supposed to be able to tap a direct connection to Honor for powering their Surges, and not use "dangerous amounts" of Stormlight as naturally harvested from highstorms. The "increased efficiency" of Stormlight use granted by the Nahel bond allows a Radiant to do more than a Herald could, at least with the same amount of Investiture. Then the higher spren learned to "pattern a bond after the Honorblades", I think meaning their bonding with a human as the Honorblades were bonded with Heralds. Which allowed for more efficent use of Surges, by far more individuals, and independent of a direct conduit from a Shard like Honor. Uh-oh. And then Ishar (as told in the recorded lore of the in-world Words of Radiance and the chapter heading for Ch. 42 in the actual book; it might "really" have been Honor), he readily understood the implications of Surges being granted to men, and caused organization to be thrust upon them; as having too great power, he let it be known that he would destroy each and every one, unless they agreed to be bound by precepts and laws. Meaning, Ideals to require certain thresholds of conduct and commitment to advance in power. Also consider what it means for "Surges" to have destroyed Ashyn, combined with the fact that humans had worshiped and brought Odium with them to Roshar. We've seen that the Fused can wield Surges, but not via a Nahel bond and powered not with Stormlight but "Voidlight". It stands to reason that it was this form of manipulating the Surges that humans had done before. Which also implies that the Fused now have it in them, potentially, to destroy Roshar as the humans had done Ashyn? "If we can't have this world, nobody can?"

Bendalloy bubbles are hard to maintain for more than a few minutes on end, which is not long enough to cook from scratch anything more than a fried egg. And the size of the bubble is hard to make big enough to fit more than a small area of the kitchen. So you'd better have all the chopped and/or partly cooked ingredients very close at hand. It'd be easier and cheaper to use a Pulser like Marasi who can create a much larger area of effect, and maintain it for longer, to slow down time for the dining area while the kitchen gets ahead of them. Plus, the diners get to live a little longer, too! Skimming through time! I feel like there would be ethical problems and psychological risks with this...

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Ooh. I'd missed that WoB tidbit... Interesting...! So in Oathbringer, they finally translate the Eila Stele from the Dawnchant: The singers had worshipped Honor and Cultivation, who commanded them to allow Odium-worshipping human refugees with Void-based Surgebinding powers to come live on Roshar. To the writer, that betrayal extended to "gods and spren, stone, and wind" as the agents of the betrayal of the singers, not victims of betrayal by the humans, setting the stage for the reversal of gods and the creation of the Fused and Thunderclasts that led to the Oathpact. But then the Stormfather elaborates that the Recreance was more based on fear of triggering Ashyn II: The Dawnsharding of Roshar: Some action of Honor had previously "supported" the KR to keep them "righteous", without which support he knew, and even promised (and that means something extra from Honor!), that they'd Dawnshard up the place as they'd done before. (You will embrace the Dark Side. It is inevitable... It is your destiny!) So... What if Dawnshards aren't physical weapons now hidden away somewhere, but some kind of Sixth Ideal level of Surgebinding, bringing them close to the power level of a Shard of Adonalsium? A bit like the momentary Ascension the Lord Ruler experienced in Mistborn?

I'm most curious about Nicrobursts. Nicrosil is the only Allomantic metal we've never seen burned at all, ever. And in a world without Mistborn to stack duralumin and another metal, this is the only way to get duralumin-level Allomancy, by teaming up. I think Brandon has mentioned that he's planning to explore a team of Mistings (featuring a Nicroburst) going after a criminal Mistborn in a cyberpunk/1980s era of Scadrial, what was originally going to be his "Era 2" but is now "Era 3" with the Wax and Wayne stories getting inserted in between them. That still doesn't quite excuse omitting even referential mention of Nicrobursts in Era 2, like "we shoulda brought Nicky along!" In terms of "Misting Team Sports", I think a variant of field hockey would be popular. Picture a golf ball sized sphere of a light metal wrapped with padded leather, resulting in something the size of a softball, where a team of Coinshots and Lurchers (maybe 2 each, Left and Right, Front and Rear) competed to get it into the opponents' net, all wearing regulation harnesses with stone weights so everybody weighs the same, yet can't be directly Pushed or Pulled. The goalie is a Pewterarm who couldn't Push or Pull the ball, but would have to physically catch and hold the ball (the metal being relatively small, he should be able to overpower it). And maybe another two Thugs, Left and Right, who might be able to simply run the ball into the net (where the "goalie" could try to tackle them, or wrest the ball away from them). No Twinborn, though. That would be both too rare and too OP. Wax could win all by himself but Pushing the ball into the goal after tapping his ironmind for weight, to completely overpower the opponents' Allomancy. And the Pewterarm goalie who might catch the ball in his glove with it.

It's only "breaking the fourth wall" now that you've seen this tweet and would recognize it as an intentional reference on Brandon's part to Zelda, and specifically commissioned by his kids. And if it's not forced. What about having Lopen the Full Windrunner getting his forearm cut off in a battle and shrugging it off as "it's only a flesh wound, gancho. I've had worse!" And then regrowing it with Stormlight. I mean, I assume Brandon's seen Monty Python's Holy Grail. But it's also in character for him!

I don't think one goes to Team Odium just over traumatic pain; that's not the kind of "pain" he takes away. It's the pain of guilt and remorse, made numb, and replaced with "passion" ("he will give it back to you when you need it"). The pain of Amaram, betraying his own ideals in murdering innocent men and branding/enslaving the man who saved his life in claiming the Shards that Kaladin won. "If you've given up that pain... Why do you still hurt?" The pain of Moash, at betraying Kaladin, a man he owed everything. "[That numbness] would be fine, so long as he could forget the look of betrayal he'd seen in Kaladin's eyes." (Note that this look that haunts him isn't even the look Kaladin gave him when he was about to kill him to get to Elhokar back at the palace on the Shattered Plains, but from when he killed Elhokar in Kholinar and then gave the Bridge Four salute. Which Moash realizes must mean that up until that point, incredibly, Kaladin might have, could have forgiven him, at least on a personal level, for the palace attack.) And the pain of Dalinar over Evi's death, and the massacre of innocents at the Rift. It's not just a case of "accidental death", but one that Dalinar blames himself for, in getting carried away with a rage and bloodlust that he could not then retract or control. Odium says to him, "I was there with you! I made you do it! It wasn't your fault!" And if Dalinar had agreed with that view, the way that Moash had done while laboring as a captive in the singers' attack on Kholinar (What happened at the Shattered Plains wasn't my fault... I was pushed into it. I can't be blamed... that was merely how men were in this debased age... He was a product of his culture...), he would have fallen under Odium's sway. And the "passion" he replaces that pain with, when it suits him, is basically the Thrill. If Adolin were in a position to be susceptible to Odium, he'd have to do something he truly, deeply is bothered by having done, something that gnaws on his mind. Killing Torol Sadeas is not on that list, nor is anything we've seen from his POV so far.

The problem with making a golem out of food is that it can be eaten. At what point would an Awakened mass of honey, whatever its form, cease to be Awakened, if it was rapidly spread on corn cakes and consumed? In fact, technically, even a Lifeless human or squirrel could also be eaten. Bleargh. Does the largest segment retain the Breath and the Command, or is it simply diluted or even replicated? And if you could Awaken a mass of liquid and someone drank it... What then? Especially if the Command was something attacking? Now I'm picturing something like this:

Another point in favor of this line of thinking is that, as long as you know about Feruchemy at all, it's pretty easy for many Allomancers - and all Inquisitors - to spot a Keeper: that'd be the Terrisman or woman wearing not just the traditional metal jewelry, but metalminds. We see that Wax, a weaker Era 2 Coinshot, immediately differentiates an ordinary bracelet from an Invested one by the thickness of the blue line to it with his Steelsight, as the more invested a metalmind is, the harder it is to Push on (and the fainter the line would be). So obviously an Inquisitor, Mistborn, Coinshot, or Lurcher could easily be trained to do the same, as long as they realized it was possible.

So when Prof "goes evil" after being manipulated by Regalia into using the full extent of his Epic powers, why would he (continue to) call himself "Limelight"? That's the name that David made up on the spot to throw Steelheart's Enforcement crews off the Reckoners' trail into thinking there was a new Epic in town come to challenge Steelheart. Before Prof had even accepted David as a Reckoner, and before David ever knew Prof was an Epic. I realize that in the wake of Steelheart's downfall "Limelight" had become a recognized name, along with David's moniker of "Steelslayer", but wouldn't this name therefore have a significant emotional link for him to David and the Reckoners? Didn't he had another Epic name dating back to when he tried to be part of a crew of "good Epics" that included Regalia (who even already had that alias dating back to her TV show as a judge)? Or did Regalia and the others only assume Epic names upon fully succumbing to the darkness (and so Prof never had one at all)? It always felt to me like an opportunity missed for David not to have pointed that out while trying to talk Prof back from the darkness. I guess it'd have been too much of a Mistborn reference to have David say something like: "So now you're Limelight? I named you, Prof. You were my friend, my mentor, my hero. Doesn't that matter to you?"

Haha, right, it depends which interpretation you use to choose the denominator I wouldn't be surprised if 99% of Brandon's twists are predicted in a post here somewhere, in someone's post, at some point... That is very different from saying 99% of all predictions posted here are correct!

We saw Wayne throw up a speed bubble around himself and Wax, but excluding Bleeder, to cancel out her tapping a steelmind for speed. She totally wasn't expecting it. Of course, Wayne's bubble is stationary, and it doesn't help in a direct, close-up fight with a Steelrunner, who'd be inside the bubble instead of outside. But Marasi's cadmium bubble would work on an unsuspecting Steelrunner to enable outside help to see the speed canceled out (as long as they don't have to fire projectiles through the bubble). If a Steelrunner knows an allomantic time bubble is in play, though, they could tap at a higher multiplier to a level further than the Allomancer can flare, given enough speed in the steelmind.

Brandon's going all out for the surprise twist. A certain despised one-eyed low-nahn darkeyed pardoned deserter will become first a squire then a full Radiant, heal his socket with Stormlight, and saves humanity by unexpectedly taking down Moash/Vyre. That's right. Gaz FTW! While a certain Lordling Windrunner grits his teeth!

Since each Surge would need its own syllabus, if you will, to teach its use, it really should be Urithuru University with ten "colleges" or departments within it. Ten Surgemasters, one of who is named the Head or Chancellor; or perhaps, an independent head in charge over ten Surgemasters, a Head Surgemaster (not "Surge Headmaster" - that sounds like the name for a heavy metal band). An independent Head Surgemaster wouldn't (necessarily) be a Dalinar-like Bondsmith who was the overall leader of the Knights Radiant, either. We are talking about a training school, so it should be someone more gifted in, and oriented towards, administration and pedagogy, which Dalinar is not. Maybe a rotating term of office among the ten Surgemasters, as I could easily see that serving as the Chair would be something a lot of active KRs would try to avoid instead of seek after. I think being called something like the Surgemaster of Gravitation sounds awful, though. It'd be better to correlate each of the ten Surges with one of the ten numbers/Essences (they basically line up that way already), and call the Surgemaster of Gravitation "Jesmaster", of Regrowth "Vevmaster", and so on.

Wax got Leeched at a distance on a train in The Bands of Mourning, it was the first use of the "Allomantic grenade" cube that we saw. If a Leecher could drain a KR of Stormlight in the same way that the Larkin did that Nale used to drain Lift, it would stand to reason a similarly charged cube would do the same. And what about Nicrobursting? Nuisance nicrobursting (unexpected and unwelcome) sounds like something with great potential, not only in-world, but also from the POV of a real life reader (i.e., I think it'd be hilarious). Zap a Coinshot just as he/she is taking off and watch them fly off with a bang, with no steel left in them! Or a Windrunner who suddenly performs an octuple Lashing! Best. Metalborn. Prank. Ever!

There are only six chapters in Part V of The Way of Kings, and the first chapter in it picks up right where Part IV ended... It's really only a "Part" separation is so that Part Four wraps up with the conclusion to Dalinar's disastrous betrayal on the Shattered Plains and Kaladin's rescuing of him and his men. Instead, we get a nice charcoal rubbing of an image of the Herald Nalan'Elin.

No, the old standby would be to cover the spike heads with cotton balls and then to attach googly eyes. Or to use bisected ping-pong balls with dots drawn on them for a pupil, to the heads of his eye spikes. Or just to paint the spike heads white, and then to add a little black dot in the center of each of them. As for the pointy tips protruding from the back of his head, maybe a wig or just growing his hair back out would cover that up, like if his natural hair came out big and curly (like an 1970s style Afro, or "Jew-fro"). Per the initial description of a Steel Inquisitor when Marsh and Dox visit the Ministry building to shadow Vin and Camon, they jut out "about an inch". And if he wanted to, I suppose Marsh could file them down to be less dangerous, or put little rubber bungs on them. I feel like I'm talking about how to baby-proof a Steel Inquisitor now. I think Inquisitors like Marsh are still capable of fathering children, right? What an image!

A Worldhopping Marsh presents certain difficulties... It's one thing for a collection of off-world 17th Sharders to show up at the Purelake looking for Hoid and passing for foreigners from some distant part of Roshar; it's another thing for Marsh to go around with spikes in his eyes and pass for anything other than a monster. And we haven't seen any Cosmere worlds other than Taldain in White Sand where people wear goggles or dark glasses (and even so, wearing them everywhere, even indoors and at night, would rapidly get suspicious). I guess he could go around Soothing people all the time of their suspicion, if he carried enough brass.

He could definitely do a slow-burning atiummind thing, in his stomach. He definitely wasn't in the habit of doing that on a routine basis, as we saw by how he died. The question is, could have he done a slow-burn in his sleep to maintain his age, if he wanted to sleep, which he didn't have to do. To me it is not entirely analagous to burning pewter while unconscious to stay alive, as we've seen Vin and Elend both do, or to unconscious use of Stormlight or goldmind healing, because those are "staying alive" modes that matches one's physical self to the Spiritual model (the underlying basis for the way that F-gold or Stormlight healing works). And the whole reason the Lord Ruler quickly died without his atiumminds is because his Spiritual model "knew" it was being bypassed; his Spiritual self's "natural level" was far older. So that's something that just feels to me like it needs to be done consciously, especially if it's a matter of modulation. On the otherh and, that might be the best explanation for Vin coming across Rashek-as-an-old-man. She interrupted him napping, and the unconscious "keep me alive" Allomantic burning of an atiummind results in him being at a near maximum for his natural physical age, requiring him to wake up and tap harder to get down to a form in his early twenties.

Yes, in fact he is shown in some POVs while under Ruin's control to be holding himself back and slowing down on purpose, to further Ruin's deceptions. Like when he "dueled" with Penrod in order to put a hemalurgic spike into his heart. If you mean, why didn't he just tap out a steelmind and obliterate Elend or Vin when fighting them, the answer is he wanted to get information out of them about where the atium store was.