Dlyol

@Nymeros perhaps I should have been clearer. My point is that races have no existence independent of racism. They do not have some primordial existence but are created by human societies. As 'races' clearly have now been manufactured in our world they 'exist' in a certain sense but in Stormlight in my view they have not and do not.

What I said was not wrong but perhaps I should have been clearer around definitions. I was careful to delineate between phenotype (i.e. skin, hair colour, bone structure etc) and race which is a human category. Race has no meaning outside of racism as my examples of whiteness in the United States show. Irish people who generally everyone considers to be white now were considered 'swarthy' in the 19th C. Ta-Nehisi Coates has a wonderful phrase 'race is the child of racism not the father'. Sure there are people who look similar phenotypically but for them to be considered a 'race' racism as a set of power and wealth relations (which is more than just prejudice) has to turn them into one. Sure skin pigmentation is genetic but your missing the point. White, Black etc are human categories not natural ones and who gets to be in them and out of them is defined by racists not nature. On the Burakumin, you are saying that 'races exist' and the Burakumin are not a race. But races don't exist! Certainly not in some primordial fashion. To say otherwise is race essentialism. Race as it actually exists is something racists create using wealth and power exactly as the Burakumin were created as a concept in feudal Japan

I think one point that this discussion of skin colour in Roshar is missing is that in our society skin colour's are as much, if not more, social constructions than phenotypical realities. In the United States, Irish, Italian and Mormon people were historically regarded as non-white but are now broadly thought of as white and in our own day increasing numbers of Hispanic citizens (especially those who are wealthier and have been citizens for longer) are self-defining as white. Conversely, African-American slaves who due to generations of slaveholder rape were phenotypically white were still defined as black by law and society because of their ancestry. My point is not to make some political point or to give a sociology lecture but rather to point out what feels like an incorrect premise to some of these comments which is; 'races exist' and then questioning whether Rosharans care. Races don't exist, rather they are constructed by society when assigning wealth, power and esteem (reading Stormlight I sometimes worry Brandon makes this error as well). The question is not whether there are different skin phenotypes on Roshar but how society constructs those phenotypes by defining who possesses them and how they should feature in the hierarchy of wealth and power we call 'race'. Edit: Here's an example from a non-western society. Japan constructed a disadvantaged racial group out of people no phenotypically different from the rest of Japanese society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burakumin

With regard to Nale surge binding we have this in Edgedancer Edgedancer spoilers So he can clearly surgebind

Certainly it's possible. My assumption has been that Void has been designed to be understood in two senses. One is obviously the sort of generic high fantasy word for devastation which I think its understood as both in and out of world. The other is its definition of ending an agreement as in 'voiding a contract'. As Honour's mandate is the honouring of promises and agreements this sense denotes the function of the Voidbringers to oppose him and (speculation here but I think its well founded) to seek to void a specific agreement: the Oathpact between Honour and the Heralds that traps Odium in the Roshar system

I agree vibrant doesn't sound at all like something related to Odium. To my mind it sounds like it relates to the Rhythms in some way. OED gives 'strong or resonant' to define vibrant with regard to sound. I wonder whether previously Listeners could use the Rythmns in some more meaningful way. Perhaps just as humans were Radiant because some of their number physically radiated (Storm)light some of the Listeners could derive power from the Rythmns - presumably requiring the adoption of certain rare forms.

This is pretty explicit @waynegrantham

@Rasha A wonderful summary - although didn't Le levée en masse gain 800,000 volunteers? The only thing I would of added are the various trolling takes historians have on the Revolution including my favourite which is that it actually began in 1787 when Prussia invaded the Dutch Republic (for which we can thank T.H. Blanning). Worth emphasising as well that the sale of church property to solve the financial crisis of the French state created that distinctively French class of medium sized farmers who formed the backbone of every French regime from Napoleon to the end of the Third Republic and that the culture war created by the Civil Constitution of the Clergy has divided France ever since.

In more rural areas, at least, Alethi seem to think that their king just needs to know what's going on so that he can help. (Humorously, Kaladin immediately starts thinking about communicating with Dalinar.) This may not necessarily reflect what urban Alethi think about Elhokar, but I don't think this was a casually dropped line. It seems more likely that Brandon wanted to remind us that at least some people saw Elhokar as king, and a potentially benevolent one, too. Yes! Exactly this. This view, that injustices, when they occur only occur because the king doesn't know or because his advisors are deceiving him, was the norm in almost every pre-modern society. It is central to how feudalism sustains itself as a socioeconomic model and I don't see any reason why Alethkar would be different. Presumably, prior to the Kholin unification, the Highprinces were the focus of this assumption and now it has shifted to the king. @maxal I did not mean to suggest you don't know your history and I'm sorry if I did. I think on this one we will have to agree to disagree although our positions aren't actually that different in that we are both now cautioning each other in believing too strongly in one narrative as opposed to arguing for another. Is your view possible, certainly maybe even plausible. I don't, however, believe it is probable for three reasons. One is meta-textual - I would imagine something so earthshattering as revolution would have more foreshadowing and I feel that Mistborn is the series in which Brandon explores these themes and I don't think he'll do it twice. The second is my own personal beliefs derived from my life as an aspiring, professional historian and my politics about how human events work as class politics directed by ideology and culture. If there exists in Alethkar a class that is aware of its status as a class and of its class interest then we haven't seen it. Darkeyes are a legally prescribed caste, not a class which is a group of people of common economic interests. There are darkeyed merchants, darkeyed peasants and darkeyed urban labourers all of which are separate classes within the legal caste system with potentially conflicting economic interests. Certainly, we haven't seen anything that resembles a revolutionary ideology. Now I accept that Brandon may not this view of how human events work so my third reason is that by the nature of human beings certain things must be true. There will be people within the Kholinar rioters who are more radical and those who are less. Revolutions depend on instability which means that by their nature they must be themselves unstable. Small changes of momentum in unstable situations can have big consequences. This all being said your explanations fits all the facts and so is completely possible. This is actually a hotly contested point - when did the Revolution end? In the 1970s a French government minister lost his job for declaring the Revolution was over. The official French understanding of the Revolution is not as of an event but as an ongoing process. Conversely, some historians have said the Revolution ended in 1795, four years before Napoleon or even earlier. Not that this has any bearing on the argument it's just an interesting demonstration of how complicated revolutions can get. Also, this really isn't true. Working class activism in England - The Peasant's revolt, the Levellers, Chartism didn't succeed at gaining political power until the formation of the Labour party in 1906 and indeed was often brutally suppressed. Parliament was controlled by the aristocracy right up until the end of the 19th century. The fights of British history - The Civil War and the Glorious Revolution - were partly religious and partly about ideology but they were between aristocrats who shared assumptions about economic models and how society should be organised. This points to a third option that neither of us has mentioned but is perhaps the most probable. Lots of sound and fury leading to sufficient concessions in governance to appease the rioters but that leave the fundamentals of Alethi society; feudalism, Vorinism and lighteyed privilege unchanged

Setting aside the fact that Alethkar prior to the riots had neither of the two main pre-requisites for revolution which are economic crisis (although it is likely the Everstorm will cause one) and widespread dissemination of a new idea set which is hostile to existing social arrangements, for arguments sake I will say that Kholinar is now Paris in 1791. Revolutions are not ideologically uniform things. The darkeyes of Kholinar are not a lumpenproletariat. All Brandon has to do is write a perfectly plausible interlude demonstrating that many members of the revolutionary class are increasingly uncomfortable with going so directly against Vorinism and monarchy to introduce the idea of the potential for a Thermidor and then have Elhokar return by Honorblade. Suddenly those people are faced with a king carrying a symbol of their religion that grants him mystic powers and you don't think that those people already nervous might have a change of heart? Sure, the Jacobins of Kholinar (to continue the analogy) would continue in their path but surely enough people would feel the change of weather for Revolutions to run out of the most precious currency of revolutions - momentum. Futhermore, this course would make Elhokar think he did something worthwile (misguidedly but still) and could give him the self-confidence he so sorely lacks. None of this requires them to bask in his glory just certain people making rational decisions in their own self-interest As for your claims about Alethkar's unification it is perfectly true that it was unified by war but at what point did the Kholins make any promises to darkeyes. Their's was an entirely socially conservative revolution - from the point of view of the average Alethi peasant or urban labourer one set of lighteyes replaced another. Unless I missed it did they promise the end of seignurial dues or lighteyed legal privileges and then fail to deliver? I'm not pretending that the Kholins aren't an oppressive regime but the relevant factor in causing a revolution is not oppressiveness but change in oppressiveness - people can abide a lot its when things get a lot worse that revolutions occur. Things really haven't - indeed if anything the unification of Alethkar and end to war on its soil probably has led to a slight economic improvement in recent years. It may be that they hate the Kholins specifically- my read is that most don't care about them except as just another set of lighteyed overlords who they have been suffering under for centuries. For every Kaladin we've seen we've seen a Gaz or the residents of Hearthstone - accepting the social hierachy and trying to make their own way within it. Brandon understands all of this. Thats why (whether consciously or not) he immitated Lenin's theory of the Party as Revolutionary Vanguard with Kelsier's crew in Mistborn. So while yes, he may choose to take the Kholinar riots in the Paris 1791 direction (which I sought of also feel is so interesting a plot that it really should have been better prepared with characters to lead it etc) he could easily with all the facts that we know take it in another direction entirely. None of this is to take anything for granted. Rather the opposite. You have decided that Kholinar is in revolution, which it may well be, but is not certain and that the only possible endpoint of that revolution is a set of events that to fully explore the consequences thereof would require several books to themselves. I am suggesting that the riots could be limited in ideological scope and that that could lead to some character development for Elhokar. p.s. On the Spanreeds, if they were merely cut to Urithiru I might be more persuaded that is revolutionary as it is we know that Hearthstone (and so presumably the rest of Alethkar) is cut off from Kholinar. That makes no sense in the grand darkeyed rising theory - why wouldn't they want to let the rest of their fellows know the Revolution was happening to spread the joyous news and recruit the rest of Alethkar to their camp

@maxal It is, of course, the case that nothing forces this plot line to occur as these things have tended to do. Indeed, it may be that the drop in communications is due to a Revolution as opposed to, for example, Odium's machinations. I was suggesting, however, you were overly certain that Elhokar is hated. It strikes me as entirely plausible that a King returning born by a mythical weapon of a deity is the sort of thing that empowers small c conservative pro-monarchy voices in the rioters. From there, it wouldn't be hard for someone of even Elhokar's level of competence to restore order. While the series so far has been awash with low-level resentment of social order, I'm yet to be persuaded what we have seen so far is a pre-revolutionary Alethkar

I hate to quibble but as far as we know the rebellion in Kholinar is not against Elhokar but against his queen. That may seem like semantics but the trope of 'the king is good, his advisors are bad' is one of the most pervasive and universal in historical feudal monarchies and there isn't a huge amount of reason to believe Alethkar is otherwise especially given how gendered Vorin society is. It would fit completely with the facts we know to believe that the rebellion in Kholinar, like almost every rebellion in feudal societies, is being carried out in the name of the king and against his queen and her advisors. Pai, the instigator, may have ideas that challenge the social order generally but that does not imply the rioters do. Even if they do history is littered with examples of kings of even the meanest gifts who have managed to persuade rebellions they are on their side, even Elhokar's return ending the riots wouldn't be unprecedented. .

@Aleksiel so my thought is essentially that the Henry James novella is essentially about whether or not the sinister is in the mind of the narrator or not especially as no one else senses it. In Oathbringer so far Shallan has being getting sinister senses off Renarin and Urithiru that other people haven't so Brandon could be setting something similar up here where Shallan keeps getting feeling certain things no one else does

@Aleksiel it is the title of chapter nine in the Oathbringer excerpts sorry I should have been more clear. The reference is mostly atmospheric but as I say I do wonder if it might not also be suggesting something about Shallan as an unreliable narrator or foreshadowing something as yet unclear

I'm not certain whether this is deliberate or not but this chapter title seems to me to be a reference to The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, the 19th Century American novelist. The novella is ghost story marked by its pervasive feeling of unease and questions over whether the female narrator is in fact sane. Given this chapter deals with the second murder and the questions Shallan has around Renarin, I wonder whether Brandon is attempting an oblique bit of foreshadowing here although of exactly what I'm not sure. Brandon, I'm sure has read the novella and both the chapter and novel seek to create similar senses in the reader so it's possible it is just a reference to that though. Anyway, it seemed to be clear enough that it was worth mentioning (also if anyone else has spotted any references like this one in Brandon's works this could be a nice place to dump them)

Ah I see so the point is not that (as far as we know) Odium's various weapons (I don't want to say Voidbringers because I think that term is definitionallly loose) have some magical way to prevent Radiant healing but rather they can do sufficient damage to destroy the central nervous system instantly. Thanks that clears that up

This is something I've been puzzled by. What benefit does a Radiant gain from Plate they don't get from Stormlight? Even its protection is not needed when you can heal with Stormlight. I've been wondering whether Stormlight can't heal wounds from some of Odium's monsters like it can from normal injuries or Shardblade injuries. We saw in Dalinar's first vision the Midnight Essences causing damage to Shardplate that wasn't repaired by feeding it Stormlight. Therefore, the point to a Radiant wearing it would be the same as for anyone wearing armour because he couldn't just heal up. I'm not sure realmatically how Odium could do this but it would make sense for him to devise a counter for the Radiants' defensive capabilities and from a storytelling perspective it would make one of our radiant characters feel more credibly in danger than if he were if his plate/Stormlight healing combo made him practically invincible.

I don't doubt this part. My query arises from the fact that the percentage of food and its nutritional content derived from Soulcasting will be higher. Soulcasting a rock into meat will be expensive but it will all be edible and highly nutritious. Accelerating the growth of plants leaves you with a plant of which a lot isnt edible (unclear what the percentages are in Roshar but most of a cereal plant isn't used to make bread) and will be less nutritious. So the process will probably be cheaper but whether it will produce more food per unit stormlight I'm not sure

This is actually a much better way of doing it than I was imagining it which was Radiants standing in their shardplate behind little wooden market stalls outside Oathgate platforms desperately hawking their wares to slightly bemused travellers. Given that Oathgates are clearly a Utility and a natural monopoly it does as you say make sense to regulate them as such. The fact that ten obsessed Rosharans would probably insist on ten different competitors would also lead to better competition than we see in the real world...

@CaptainRyan Your mention of the tariffs Radiants were charging to use the Oathgates has made me realise that the Radiants had monopoly power in the Oathgate Transportation marketplace. The rulers of the Silver Kingdoms or possibly the Heralds should have set up regulators to do some trustbusting of the Radiants, forced them to divide into multiple groups who could compete on price and consumer value. When I started writing this comment I was being facetious but the more I think about it if the Heralds had forced Roshar into more efficient economic policies maybe their task would have been easier come Desolation time

Hello, everyone, I've been lurking on here for a good few years now but I finally decided to take the plunge and put some of my ideas forward. I am a history student from London and I think this was part of what first attracted me to Brandon's books, that compared to other fantasy authors I read he thinks about society holistically and really thinks through the impacts the fantasy elements would have on his worlds. This is one of the elements of history I most enjoy, thinking through how societies and cultures very different from our own functioned as a whole and that nothing is beyond the purview of history. The other element of history that I most enjoy is what we do on here, the constructive argument, the piecing clues together and approaching questions from new angles and that is what I hope to be a part of. I have read most everything Cosmere but am yet to read Brandon's other works although I do love his short stories. In fact, despite his larger series like Stormlight or Mistborn having that historical sense I mentioned earlier it his shorter works like Shadows for Silence or especially The Emperor's Soul which are my favourite, the latter of which I thought was really quite beautiful. I'm looking forward to getting to know you guys and becoming part of this community

That Gardeners idea is interesting because I wonder whether the fields might also be there not for reasons of practicality but either as you say to satiate the desire of some Radiants to farm as a hobby or perhaps as part of their role in maintaining knowledge for humanity through Desolations and in the gaps between them. We know from one of Dalinar's visions that the Radiants based in Alethla maintain the arts of killing and that during Desolations vast percentages of humanities populations perished. If the knowledge of how to farm dies out with those huge casualties then humanity can't recover from Desolations so perhaps the fields are there so the Radiants can know how to do it and so pass the knowledge on to post-Desolation humanity.

So this is my first topic on here and I thought I'd share some ideas I've been having about Progression and specifically its Growth (as opposed to Regrowth or healing aspect). I think as a community (probably rightly) are more excited about the applications of Progression for battlefield healing etc but two things that we've learnt in the preview chapters have had me wondering as to whether the historical radiants also used it to produce food during desolations. One is the fact that Urithiru contains lots of fields, the other is the ability Dalinar showed to co-opt and possibly magnify the surges of others. It seems apparent that Urithiru was at least partially built as a final fortress for humanity in the eventuality that a desolation drove them from everywhere else in Roshar and this is obviously why it has these fields (as well as saving the Radiants from having to trade with others in times of peace). The problem though is that given that Urithiru has the capacity to hold very large numbers of people these fields seem insufficient. Now in present times, Rosharans survive sieges by turning things into food directly through Soulcasters, which is likely more Stormlight efficient than using progression to grow plants of which not all is edible, additional energy is required to be turned into bread and are generally less nutritious than meat. This is especially true as farming is far less time efficient than Soulcasting - why would the Radiants bother to spend the best part of a year growing crops when in that time multiple Highstorms will come to give additional Stormlight to use for Soulcasting food directly? The problem with the idea of using progression to speed up farming to near instantaneous is that it is likely that as with other surges you can only use it on plants you are actually touching. But when I read Dalinar co-opting Shallan's Lightweaving (with what I presume is his Resonance) to produce an effect she herself was incapable of I wondered whether it might be possible for a Bondsmith to use the Surge of Progression to cover an entire field and so accelerate the growth of the crops throughout. The visual image of her Stormlight spreading to fill out the room struck me as similar to that of a Truthwatcher or Edgedancer touching the soil under the influence of a Bondsmith and his Stormlight spreading to grow seeds instantly to maturity. As I see it there are two problems with the theory, one it is unclear whether Bondsmiths could, in fact, do this - especially if the seeds aren't touching each other, the other is it is unclear how the Stormlight efficiency of this would line up next to Soulcasting. The fact does remain, however, that Urithiru's fields seem both insufficient and redundant when servicing its population given the existence of Soulcasting. If anyone has any relevant WOBs or thoughts on the Growth aspect of Progression or the fields of Urithiru I'd love to hear them but thanks for reading this longish post

Hi, First-time poster, long time lurker. I have read Unfettered and there is another reason for why he married Shshsh rather than another Alethi and while it's not that big of a spoiler I probably should treat it as such So SPOILERS for THE THRILL