robardin

"Ash" bonding an ashspren. The main objection would be that that's too obvious and cutesy!

In addition, the Stormfather (as the remnant of Honor) is the one to determine, even if reluctantly, when THESE WORDS ARE ACCEPTED for a Windrunner - not the individual honorspren. The (proto-)Radiant needs to speak the words aloud, too: Syl was quite insistent about that for Kaladin's Second and Third Ideals. A Cultivationspren like Windle preferrred that Lift say her Words aloud, but sighed and accepted that she'd "said them, in my heart" and appeared as a Shardrod for her. A Cryptic like Pattern only needs a Truth to "octave up" the Nahel Bond - they don't need to be spoken aloud, simply acknowledged or confessed between the human and the spren. Though it seems each Truth needs to be... Deeper as the Ideals progress. The Lightweaver must become more and more self-aware. And the highspren? They are the embodiment of the concept of discernment - it makes a lot of sense that they'd work the way they do. I think the OP summarized it pretty well. Which makes me wonder about Helaran, Shallan's oldest brother, who per a WoB was a Skybreaker acolyte. I suspect that he was dispatched to kill Amaram because Nalan had a reason to "strike against the Sons of Honor", of which Amaram was a member, yet had no legal basis to do so - so nobody who'd sworn the Second Ideal of the Skybreakers could move directly against him. Which means maybe Helaran FAILED the novitiate test to become a Squire in doing what he did (or attempted to do). Remember that Szeth advanced by being the only one to see through the matter of "kill the escaped prisoners" as the "obvious task at hand" and realize that the bigger crime was for the nobleman to have run the prison in such a way that enabled the escape by means of engendering desperation to kill the lone guard. And he moved to kill Amaram with "deadspren" Shards, which surely the highspren (like all other spren) disapprove of? (Or maybe they don't care, since they seem to have them on hand to lend out to acolytes in the first place.) Also, killing numerous people, like most of Kaladin's squad, in getting to Amaram - was that not murder?

At least one of them was the Blessing of Potency - like inexhaustible pewter, with a lesser effect. TenSoon thinks to himself while recovering OreSeur's spikes that he'd hidden before returning to the Homeland how he'd never have been able to follow Vin without it. What I'm wondering is if TenSoon recovered them after the Catacendre. He'd pulled his spikes out as part of the Resolution, and then later, Harmony restored their spikes, but what about OreSeur's? In Shadows of Self, Wax perceives TenSoon approaching him in the darkness under the Originators' Tomb with Steelsight as two faint blue lines to metal - which I read as being faint because they're his hemalurgic spikes. But there are two blue lines, not four.

The Ghostbloods are an enterprise of organized crime? That would imply they're in it primarily for personal financial gain. As Mraize said to Shallan at Urithiru, "You are ignorant. You don't know who we are. You don't know what we're trying to accomplish. You don't know much of anything at all... I have answers for you. ... Let Veil come to us. And let her find truth." They are trying to accomplish something. You don't use the word "accomplish" to refer just to gathering power and riches for the sake of having it. And part of their stockpiling is not just of Things Of Power, but also of Truth.

I'm not hairy enough to cosplay this (even if I wanted to), but it is the first thing I thought of when I saw... https://www.joyscribe.com/you-can-now-buy-festive-lights-for-beards-this-christmas/

"We look after our own... We do not offer the invitation [to be one of the Ghostbloods] to just anyone. [We moved to assassinate Jasnah] after she, in turn, had assassinated a number of our members. You didn't think her hands were clean of blood, did you, Shallan? ...Your family has a long history of involvement in these events." Shallan's own father was a Ghostblood, though her mother and brother were aligned with the Skybreakers, which is why her mother tried to kill her. (Will Shallan realize that that implies it would have been only a matter of time before Helaran came to do the same?) Also, now that Jasnah's resurfaced alive, the GBs are probably going to try to kill her again. Unless the Ghostbloods accept weregild and Jasnah were interested in making peace. And who were these other Ghostbloods that Jasnah killed or had killed? Were those hits some of the unspoken history between her and "Liss, the Weeper" assassin with the Shardblade?

Well, it is true. Despite having infinite F-steel and F-zinc to think about things to do and then to do them at blinding speeds, plus infinite F-bronze to stay awake 24/7, we don't see him do a whole lot. He comes out of Kredik Shaw to supervise the occasional skaa slaughter, while Super-Soothing everybody in a show of power; and for a special reason, like to personally smack down Kelsier, after he fought and killed an Inquisitor. Otherwise, as far as we can tell, he just kicks around Kredik Shaw waiting to taunt any skaa prowlers who dare to show up. ...or is he busy canning food in his basement? I mean, he admitted he never thought of a way to defeat Ruin, even given over a thousand years' time and vast mental capacity to do so; only to plan how best to survive when Ruin would finally escape from his trap (likely without him alive any more). I don't think he actually thought all that time about it. More like someone giving up on a frustrating crossword puzzle, after maybe 100 years of thinking about it, he just thought to himself, By Preservation's ghost, I'm done - I can't think about this any more, I'm just gonna go full survivalist until that Well fills up again.

He did not make a mistake. The Lord Ruler had not ever made a mistake. However, it was time for a change.

What's also interesting is that Vasher/Zahel has expertise in wielding a Shardblade - it's not just general "mastery of the sword" that he teaches, but techniques like throwing a Shardblade, as evidenced by when Adolin practices doing so in WoR ("focusing as Zahel had taught him years before, sending a direct instruction to the Blade - picturing what he needed it to do"). We know that constructing Nightblood was based on experiences that Vasher and Shashara had with Shardblades on Roshar, but seeing what they can do from afar versus getting their hands on them enough to become proficient with them are very different things. And Zahel, at least, is darkeyed. Did they become "swordmaster ardents" first, based on ordinary swordsmanship, to get their "in" to becoming masters of both Blade and Plate (since it seems ardents are not held to the lighteyes/darkeyes types of restrictions, while training in the arts of war are still part of the ardentia)?

It's pretty common in my lifetime and definitely still is today. Especially in the East Asian cultures that Rosharan Alethi society is partly based upon, kids are pretty much always trained (I wouldn't say "forced") to write and eat with their right hands (i.e., holding chopsticks). I cannot recall ever seeing someone using their left hand to hold chopsticks who wasn't born and raised in the US, and most likely not by Asian immigrant parents.

This is hilarious, but also reminds me of something serious. What Rashek did in arranging the caverns was pretty remarkable from a purely administrative POV, really. It even justifies, as a purely practical matter (and not simply egotism), why he had to eliminate all other world religions and institute himself as the God King. For hundreds upon hundreds of years, there were operations diverting the atium mined at the Pits with decoy coins while moving it immediately to the kandra Homeland next door, plus those involved in the ongoing preparation and maintenance of the storage caverns that were hidden in richly metallic areas - all to keep Ruin from seeing what was really going on. These operations were commissioned to his obligators with instructions he wrote in sheets of metal, also so that Ruin wouldn't know what was going on. Even if he'd wanted to, Rashek himself couldn't personally do all these things with massive bursts of F-steel or something and still keep Ruin from knowing what was happening, as he was subject to Ruin's surveillance and whispering 24/7 (and he never got to sleep after his mortal lifetime should have ended, either, so he acknowledges he's quite possibly mad). He needed agents to do all this work, but also, agents who eventually would have to leave the "metallic shielded zones" at the Pits and within the caverns. The obligators who did the day to day organization of these operations were not slaves who were never to see the light of day again, like the wretches who did the brutal work of harvesting the geodes themselves. Yet they shared his burden of secrecy, never to speak or to write of these matters while away from the caverns/pits, lest Ruin be able to overhear or to read about what was going on. And... It worked. Hundreds of years of a tightly kept operational secret. Because those obligators BELIEVED in their work. Perhaps Yomen was not so unusual a specimen in his devotion - just in his leadership ability.

Well TenSoon was the first "double kandra" in history, maybe he's just going even further now. Maybe Felt is TenSoon pretending NOT to be a kandra, in order to fool the OTHER kandra on Roshar, because NOT doing those things would make other kandra assume he's NOT a kandra? OK, I'll stop now.

We don't know what the "Connection trick" is that worldhoppers seem to do, but the easiest way to seem Rosharan is to be skilled at learning a local language, customs, etc., all while living a role for a long time. Doesn't it seem unusual that Felt isn't just a "Scadrian on Roshar" the way Demoux was seen to be at the Purelake, with his compadres of the 17th Shard, or like Azure? They're people who had a reason or a mission to accomplish on Roshar, were "popping in", and in Azure's case, kind of got stuck longer than she intended to do, what with getting sidetracked with the Wall Guard at Kholinar. And their use of local language via Connection, like Allik's speech in The Bands of Mourning, still have accents and turns of phrase that seem strange or foreign to the locals. Vasher/Zahel has "gone to ground" with a longer, open-ended identity as an ardent on Roshar, and would be more likely to have learned Alethi "the hard way", yet even he stands out as "odd" due to his use of color-based turns of phrase identical to what Azure says ("like white on black"), suggesting he's still using a Connection trick at least sometimes. Felt does not. He stands out physically to Dalinar, but in almost no other way. And, he's integrated into Alethi society for the long haul - he was already in Dalinar's service when he visited the Nightwatcher, and was still in Dalinar's scouting team at the Battle of Narak, spanning many years. He didn't just "pop in" like a worldhopper on a mission, and appears to have "gone native" at a deeper level than Zahel the "worldhopper gone to ground". He's even married. He's from Scadrial, and it's a little odd how a House Venture spy would survive the Catacendre to become not just a worldhopper, but one that would be a long term one like that... But it's exactly the origin planet, skillset, and modus operandi of a kandra. I was going to say that Felt would also be suspiciously long-lived, but we don't really have an official cosmere timeline placing the events of SA versus MB Era 1, plus obviously Demoux has done it, so why not Felt? I'm just pointing out that at the same time as we've been asked to consider how unusually not unusual Felt is for a worldhopper, we're also looking around for who might be the kandra on Roshar that we've also supposedly seen; and hey, "fitting in far better than your run-of-the-mill worldhopper" is exactly what one would expect from a kandra, yeah?

To be a full Feruchemist has got to be the most massively useful option, because you actually don't need to get or convert external Investiture of any kind, which let's face it, is a bit hard to come by in our world, eh? If I were limited to being a Ferring, I guess I'd choose either gold (health) or zinc (mental speed). It should "obviously" be gold, except I like being clever, think I'm already rather clever, and could easily fill a zincmind at 90% of normal while watching TV or something. And tapping a zincmind at key times when I'd like to be really, really clever is very attractive. Then again, that time I got hit by a car while on my bike and broke my foot, how awesome would it have been to just tap a goldmind?

Don't we also have a WoB that there is at least one kandra on Roshar? Hmm. Felt stand out already to Dalinar as having a "Shin-like apperance" in his pale skin and not-quite-right eyes, and only coming up to Dalinar's chest in height, but he's not all-the-way Shin looking to him, so... Maybe he's Felt with a few tweaks. TWoK takes place after MB Era 1, and most people from Era 1 on Scadrial perished - especially those in Luthadel, what with the koloss attack that killed Tindwyl, and later the Ruin-influenced rule of a spiked Penrod. What are the odds that Felt, a spy for House Venture, managed to get to one of the caverns? But if he'd died and left behind recognizable remains, TenSoon could easily make use of them, as he would have known Felt from their mutual service time to House Venture.

True, but... What or who defines the "codex of law" for the singers? They have an oral, song-based tradition. Most of the "awakened" parshmen are going along with what the Fused tell them to do because it's the only option they can see, as they refuse to be "parshmen" slaves to humans any more, and you know, are kind of upset about that whole "stole their minds and treated them as chattel for many, many generations" thing, too. Yet even they are subject to brutal treatment to keep them in line at the hands of the Fused, as Moash saw happened to Sah and their group. In turn, the Fused are doing what Odium tells them to do, out of fear of him revoking "that which grants you persistent life". Those that aren't insane. So really, the Skybreakers have signed up not for following "the laws of the original masters of Roshar", but for a rule by whim and fear from a group of partly insane Fused singers, driven by the passion and hatred of Odium, the original enemy of the Oathpact. Whatever the Great Secret is (that Hoid/Wit knows, and told to Jasnah) that caused the Recreance did not do the same for the Skybreakers, though, allows for it.

Hey, Cultivation!! You know what you are?!!...

She's clearly "pruned" and "cultivated" Dalinar to break him of his fate as Odium's chosen champion. The "warm, calming light" that gave him non-Stormfather visions in the past, and what prompts to him to unite them, seems like it can only come from her. His interpretation of the Third Ideal of the Bondsmiths is very Cultivation-y, as well: in addition to "I will take responsibility for what I have done", the words of a leader of men, he adds, "If I must fall, I will rise each time a better man." A man who intends to grow in capacity, in wisdom, and in experience. Unfortunately one of the the three Shards in question is already dead. So maybe, more like the ending to For A Few Dollars More, the revenge duel between Col. Mortimer and Indio (who it turns out, without giving a spoiler, has a past linked to the death of someone close to the Colonel). With Dalinar on the side, holding the musical pocket watch.

And then there's Venli somehow bonding Timbre, who's able to live in her gemheart and "imprisoned" the voidspren which had lodged itself there earlier, which apparently had never been possible before (it's implied that the Radiant spren bonded humans in the first place because they couldn't do so with listeners in the same way, which drove them to Odium's voidspren, not the other way around). Who knows, maybe Adolin's nascent bonding to a (mostly) dead cultivationspren could also be a facet of this "unchecking" effect with the death of Honor. Like there's more power leaking into the spren bond than before.

But if a Twinborn with F-gold and A-pewter flared pewter while filling a goldmind, would that not disrupt the goldmind storage? Because you're not all that "weak", are you? On the other hand, filling a goldmind, halting, and then burning pewter to help recover from doing so could still work to "speed things up". I like that term "light compounding" though, in that the powers are complementary and "stack up". Burning pewter would help reduce the downtime from filling a goldmind, and tapping a goldmind would help recover from pewter dragging.

In Oathbringer, when Notum (the honorspren captain of Honor's Path) is talking to Kaladin, he is surprised how Kaladin seems to know or to easily accept the idea that Honor is dead, then explains that Sylphrena "the Ancient Daughter" is so named because she was one of the first honorspren that the Stormfather created, rather than Honor himself, as deputized to do shortly before his Splintering. Then later he adds, "Your ability to change your minds, to go against what you once thought, can be a great advantage. But your bond is dangerous, without Honor. There will not be enough checks upon your power - you risk disaster." This has echoes of the phrasing that Syl used when she spoke to Kaladin about Szeth wielding Jezrien's Honorblade: "He is something far more terrible [than a Radiant]. No spren guides him", and then, "with this sword, someone can do what you can, but without the... checks a spren requires." Notum may have meant that honorspren bonds specifically are now "less checked" than before with Honor's death (because they're the spren most directly linked to Honor); or perhaps all spren Radiant bonds are, because some key component of the the way that Surgebinding worked (with its required Ideals for progression in Surgebinding abilities) relied upon Honor (the Shard) as a driving force. The Stormfather commented that Dalinar's ability to touch and "unite" the Spiritual Realm with the Physical/Cognitive ones to renew spheres is not something previous Bondsmiths bonded with him had ever been able to do. I had assumed this had something to do with the Stormfather now possessing a Splinter of Honor that he had not had before. But maybe it's also to do with some general "unchecking" of Surgebinding?

Don't forget other worldhoppers (known or suspected) whose purposes and affiliations are unknown: Khriss/Nazh (they're just doing research... Or are they...), the 17th Shard guys gone Hoid-fishin' at the Purelake, Felt (who is in Dalinar's retinue and even accompanied him to go to the Nightwatcher, yet has been confirmed to be the same Felt that spied for Elend in Mistborn: TFE), Rial from Bridge Thirteen, and some WoBs that inform us we've seen a kandra on Roshar (could be Felt or Rial, I guess) who'd presumably be working as Harmony's agent. Oh, and of course, Zahel/Vasher and Azure's/Vivenna's pursuit of him (and of Nightblood), where her use of the terms "bounty" and "criminal" while aboard Honor's Path in Shadesmar imply that she is commissioned to do so, rather than acting purely on her own.

Each of the Herald's "madness" is a distorted reflection or reversal of their original attributes, right? Of the Radiant orders they headed? Like how Nale is become a Skybreaker who selectively enforcing "laws" and meting out "justice" without regard for compassion, Shalash a destroyer instead of a creator of art, Ishar the patron of Bondsmiths is a warlord, Jezrien the King of Heralds and the embodiment of leadership became a mad, filthy beggar, and so on. So what would be a reversal of Chana (brave, obedient) and Vedel become (loving, healing, training surgeons)? I agree, if Liss is a mad Herald, being an assassin for hire would most reverse what Vedel stood for originally. And Chana, then? She's been "seen" by "at least one character, at least one time" in the first two books, is what we have to go on, is it?

Hmm, that's a good point. So I guess there is nothing to deter a Herald from bonding a dead Blade. And then there is a WoB mentioning that we've "seen" each of the ten Heralds, isn't there?