Aeshdan

Yes, but she distinguishes between "dullform" and "slaveform". I'm sure some of the parshmen are actually disguised Parshendi, but I doubt that all of them are.

With the revelation from Eshonai's sequence that the Parshendi reproduce by entering "mateform", a question arrises: how do the parshmen, who can't enter any form, reproduce? Even if parshmen don't age naturally (an assertion I find immensely improbable), they must occasionally get killed, so new ones must come from somewhere or all the parshmen would have died a long time ago. If we imagine that parshmen are limited to slaveform and mateform, that begs the question of why nobody notices the parshmen in mateform. Are the parshmen being manufactured somewhere? Thoughts? Speculations? Words Of God?

How do we know that? (I'm not disputing, I'm genuinely curious)

I personally suspect that the problem Syl has with the Shardblades is that they are being wielded by people who have not yet (in the best cases)/never will (in most cases) earn them. If I'm right, only a full Radiant, who has sworn all five Oaths, is supposed to bear Shards. Therefore, all Shardbearers (even Dalinar and Adolin) are using weapons and armor that they have no right to.

Alright, I have a theory on which Order the Edgedancers were, and consequently on pinning down three of the Surges. To start out with, note that Edgedancers have so far demonstrated two powers which all but certainly come from different surges: Regrowth and friction-manipulation. This means that one of the Edgedancer Surges is whichever one grants Regrowth. Furthermore, remember that we know the other order that gets Regrowth is the Stonewardens, and since only adjacent orders can share Surges, the Edgedancers must be either Order 8 or Order 10. However, we have another clue. The Ars Arcanum for WoK indicates that the Windrunners referred to their two Surges as Gravity and Adhesion. This makes it highly probable (not certain, but probable), that the Slickness power of Edgedancers and the Full Lashing of Windrunners derive from the same surge, which would make Edgedancers the Tenth Order. Therefore, I propose the following classification. Order Nine (Stonewardens) share the surge that grants Regrowth with Order Ten (Edgedancers) who share the Surge of Adhesion with Order One (Windrunners) who share the Surge of Gravity with Order Two (Unknown). Thoughts? Comments?

A few days ago, my family and I went to a rendition of The Nutcracker, and I'm pretty sure I spotted on of the lead actresses, a Miss Abigail Morwood, using Edgedancer Surgebinding. Specifically, there were several subtle but noticeable uses of friction-negation, some uses of general Stormlight boosts to strength, speed, reflexes, etc, and one or two points where the Stormlight bleed was visible if you knew what to look for. Just wanted to announce this!

Compounding (capital C) is a technical term for burning a Feruchemically charged metal to get extra power, while compounding (lowercase c) is one of several words that can be used to describe tapping a lot of power at once.

Quite scary to see demon-weilders taking over...

I think one of Gavilar's quotes mentions that, before they discovered the chasmfiends, the lanceryn were "the last creatures with gemhearts of any appreciable size." So maybe chull and axehound gemhearts are just two small to be worth harvesting?

Brandon said in an annotation that Nightblood's mind goes fuzzy when he's drawn because the original Breaths (the thousand used to forge him) are redirected from making him sentient to causing him to carry out the Command. So if he could be drawn somehow but not carry out the Command, he'd still be as sane as ever. I don't think a truly pure-hearted person can even draw Nightblood. Just touching it makes Vivenna so sick she can't ho

Possibly it requires some kind of special potion (possibly derived from Endowment's physical aspect, whatever that is) to make Returned fertile? They could easily slip whatever they wanted into Susebron's food.

You could also fluff it as a one-in-a-trillion sDNA mutation, like how we IRL get a calf born with extra legs or Siamese twins.

Possibly copper provides (lesser) sheilding from brass and zinc because they're in the same quadrant as it?

That would make sense. Healing the taint (especially given what Nyaveye saw) seems to be merely a matter of undoing a TP weave that is disrupting the mind, while healing natural insanity would require using the power to countermand the damaged mental processes (which probably is possible as a variant of Compulsion but is practically worthless because it does more harm than good).

“Karith! Karith!” Is that Nicol or Maragette? Captain Karith Marvudi made a tremendous effort of will and pryed open his eyelids. Huh. It’s both. Out of his right eye he could see Captain Shepard’s strong profile, with dark brownish skin and short-cut black hair. Out of his left he could see his wife’s pale face, with her blue eyes and silvery-blond hair. With a sort of mental jerk, he refocused on his surroundings. The ceiling above him was the soft green of hospital recovery rooms, bedecked with pictures of flowers, fuzzy animals, and other things designed to suggest peace and love. “Good to see you…” he croaked, surprised at how rusty his voice sounded. Before he could try to say anything else, Maragette found another use for his lips. As they separated, he tried again to speak. “How am I still alive? That wound from the boiler should have killed me. Not that I’m complaining or anything, but…” “My fault,” interjected Nicole with a grin. “Found you bleeding to death in that tin can of yours, put a tourniquet on the leg, and flew you back to the field hospital. Lost the leg, but the tourniquet kept you alive long enough to get you back to the field hospital and on transfusion. We transferred to a medevac ship when the reinforcements arrived and bombarded the boilers to scrap, flew back to here (New Cincinnati in case you’re wondering), and they started healing you. Even sequenced you for a genoplast, which should be ready in a few days. That’s also where we picked up Maragette.” Karith contemplated that in silence for a few seconds. Involuntarily, his fingers slipped down below the sheets, fingered a bandaged stub where the lower half of his leg used to be. Within living memory, this would have meant permanent disablement, as even the best prosthetics could never replicate the Creator’s handiwork. But with genoplast transplants finally perfected about a decade ago, the wound could be healed within a few weeks. The basic science behind genoplasts had been widely known since the early twenty-first century. Simply extract a few cells, and it was relatively simple to convince them to revert to stem cells, the undeveloped state they’d been in during the first few weeks of the patient’s life. Then, with the proper hormonal treatments, you could induce the stem cells to turn into almost anything you liked. The problem had simply been in getting the control fine enough that you could grow the desired organ or limb correctly without having to try and destroy twenty other limbs first. His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the door opening. There was a brief burst of formless chatter from the hall, then the door closed and the soft stillness of the recovery room returned. Karith levered himself up to a sitting position, and took a good look at his visitor. For a brief second, he was totally befuddled. Instead of the formfitting crimson of the Mechanized Infantry Corps field uniforms, or even the opulent crimson-and-gold dress uniforms, the visitor wore a simple coat and trousers of black shimmersilk over an equally black shirt in formfitting cotton. A tiny silver pin shaped like a sword glinted from his left lapel, while his right lapel bore a crimson dragon pin. With a jolt, Karith recognized the outfit. The Order of St George?! What the hell is a trained psionic doing in my hospital room? “Captain Karith Marvudi, of the Mechanized Infantry Corps, I believe?” inquired the psion in a polite tone. “Yes, and you are?” “Brendan Kline, of the Order of St. George. I happened to be stationed here when you arrived, and thus heard of the news almost as soon as the doctors discovered it. Mrs. Marvudi and Captain Shephard have not been informed, by my direction. It seemed better to tell you all at once. Technically, the information is not related to Captain Shephard, but as your partner, it has a direct impact on her.” “What news? Has he got some sort of disease? What is going on with him that you need to tell us?” Maragette was in a near-panic. Brendan ignored her and addressed Karith instead. “Captain Marvudi, according to the communications transcript from the Milacria action, you reported feeling a sensation of extreme nervousness, far beyond the norm for your previous missions. Is that correct?” “Yes, but why is that relevant?” Brendan resumed. “During the course of the sequencing procedures for your genoplast transplant, the doctors noticed certain genetic anomalies. A closer examination was indicated, especially in conjunction with your unusual sensations during insertion. The exam was performed and confirmed what we already suspected. Captain, you have psionic potential.” There was a single beat of total silence, then all three of them started talking at once. They all stopped for a second, then Karith started up again. “How is that possible? I was tested for psionics when I joined the Corps, and the tests came up negative.” “Psionic potential is undetectable until it quickens,” replied Brendan. “Usually, the quickening occurs at puberty, but occasionally the potential remains inactive through puberty and is instead quickened later in life by some profound mental or physical change, such as the birth of your first child.” “Kari’s birth gave me psionic powers?” “Not precisely. The birth of your child, and the corresponding mental changes, unlocked the potential you had already been gifted with. Furthermore, you appear to have an aptitude for precognizance, a very rare and powerful talent.” “You’re saying my husband is a prophet?!” interjected Maragette unbelievingly. “No. Contrary to what you may heard, psions, even those gifted with the talent you possess, cannot predict the future with prophetic accuracy. As temporal beings, we remain bound by free will. What precognizance can do is either see which courses of events are probably going to happen…” He turned to address Karith “Incidentally, this is what happened at Milacria. Your talent discerned that the boilers were about to ambush you, and manifested this knowledge as a feeling of unease. With training, you could have discerned several minutes in advance what was coming, allowing for evasion and possibly saving the MarsFree.” “Even more usefully, your talent can be used to look just a second or two into the future. On a timespan that short, you can have a near-perfect accuracy of prediction. This is most useful in combat, as with concentration you can learn to fire where your opponent is going to be, or see where your opponent is going to fire and adjust your dodges accordingly. It’s also just as much use against the boilers as against anything else, something that can’t be said for all talents.” “So what does this mean for Karith? And for me?” asked Maragette. “For the present, not much. Captain Sheppherd’s abilities are still embryonic, and it is not likely that anything else will happen without training. For the present, he will remain here and recover, and I shall start making the proper arrangements.” “After he’s released from the hospital, he’ll need to begin training. There’s an Order chapter-house onworld, and it even happens to be within a short commute of your present house. What will happen after he’s completed basic training we’ll see when it happens.”

Is it possible that the "can draw Aons" part of the Shaod doesn't come from Elantris but the rest of it (glowing, enhanced body, long life, etc) does? That is, imagine that Elantris contains somewhere in its complex Aon coding a set of lines that basically say "Take everyone who can draw Aons and transform them in this manner". So when Raoden gained the power to draw Aons (which in my view is a function of his Devotion, not of Elantris), Elantris noticed that and tried to do the rest of the transformation.

Especially obvious when Shai uses her Essence Mark, since she remembers, and has the skills of, a past she knows is false.

Actually, "ichor-alchohol" probably isn't the same stuff as regular alchohol, so it might even be formaldehyde, or a chemical relative of it.

It struck me a couple of days back that forging actually has two meanings, both of which apply to the magic of Soul. 1. Forging as deception ("forging" a check or painting). This is the obvious meaning, and applies to most of Shai's soulstamps, such as the ones for the wall or the table. 2. Forging as creation ("forging" a sword). I would contend that this meaning more accurately describes what Shai did in creating a new soul for Ashravan. Just a thought!

I read an entire book in 15 minutes. Won 20 dollars for doing it too.