Vortaan

But it's a safe assumption that the army that Dalinar and company faced on the Shattered Plains was probably smaller than Listener armies at the beginnings of Desolations, right? Unless every Desolation starts with the Listeners trying to prevent their gods coming back, killing a king, and getting slaughtered. We know from Eshonai's viewpoints that on the scale of armies at the time, the Parshendi are at pretty much their breaking point. Even considering the extra Parshendi that took stormform, I doubt their overall numbers equal a pre-Desolation population. Admittedly, if the various forms other than stormform are more powerful, I can see why maybe not enough Listeners took on the form, and thus they never saw the potential for an Everstorm.

I can't help but feel that if Scadrial was in the same system like you suggest and the gravity of Scadrial affected Sel enough to cause the Reod, there would have been about a million other disasters like tidal waves, other earthquakes... I'm not a geologist or astrophysicist, but I don't think plate tectonics or gravity work that way.

Welcome to the forums! I still doubt that Vasher's body is able to hold Stormlight for the whole Weeping, though. Are you suggesting that feeding off Stormlight somehow cancels out the hard "one a week" rule for feeding? That could be possible, but doesn't seem likely... Returned don't seem to consume a Breath until they need to to keep going. However, Vasher does know more than other Returned, so maybe he has learned how to consume Breath ahead of schedule... interesting idea. If he had double spikes, sure, I agree... I also doubt he'd go through with the spiking if consuming Breath makes him uncomfortable.

I'd buy that if Vasher and Denth didn't have such huge reactions to getting large amounts of Breath. It very much looks like they haven't experienced those Heightenings in a long time.

Doesn't that imply that you can use other things besides gemstones to hold Stormlight? Even they lose it over time though...

Ok, you've read the topic, so beware! Spoilers untagged from here on out. What is Vasher feeding on during Weepings? Let's assume he's using Stormlight as his Breath a week, which I think is safe. At some point, every Weeping, there is no Stormlight. Now I don't recall how long this period is, but if it's longer than a week, what's a miscreant to do? Now, some may say that he's probably storing it, but I doubt that you can turn one Investiture completely into another. Stormlight probably always behaves like Stormlight, no matter what you use it to fuel. That means that human bodies are too porous to hold onto it completely (so far). I imagine if you tried to fuel Windrunning with Breath, you might have trouble reclaiming your Lashings, for example. So... any theories? The only thing I can think of is that he has a small store of Breaths, which would explain his lifesense while not in Returned mode.

How do you figure? Everything is linked, shown best I think by Hemalurgy. Modifying the spirit web causes Physical, Cognitive, and Spiritual changes. As for how a Shardblade cuts Physical things, is it possible it's actually separating Cognitive aspects apart, thus causing a Physical split? Case study: dead chasmfiend, Cognitively thinks of itself as "corpse of chasmfiend". Adolin chops into it and it's split into "corpse of chasmfiend" and "chunk of chitin". Keeps chopping and things keep getting smaller, similar to Kaladin's mother's explanation of spren.

In which case I doubt that any transgendered self identity is going to be able to overcome the collective perception of others in a society without any experience of such a thing.

Sorry, not understanding this. You're saying that the Last Legion's descendents, who were already fighting a war where they were being annihilated, have less numbers than they did before? I would imagine that the population of Listeners is probably at one of it's lowest points ever at this point.

It could be that Shardblades cut the connection between the Cognitive and Spiritual, thereby doing damage to both.

Here's my question though: if it's possible, why doesn't Shai have a stamp that does it? Wouldn't a stamp that leaves most of her skills intact but changes her sex be a very effective disguise?

I wouldn't be surprised if each flashback character did represent an order of Radiants. Yes, we know that so far Listeners can't be Radiants, but maybe something will happen that will change the rules of the game. Here's hoping, at least, I feel awful for the Parshendi.

This puts the line from the letter stating that he holds the element as close as his skin in a better light though. It's likely that he did burn the Lerasium, and is now a Mistborn. Compounding would probably be incredibly useful, not to mention Seeking, considering Hoid tends to be around highly Invested people.

Hm... we know that Honorblades confer Surgebinding on their holders. We can also infer that Truthwatchers have limited precog, since Renarim was all bent out of shape about it. So... is it possible that the Stone Shamans saw Mr. T's need for a Truthless and provided Szeth, the perfect weapon with Surgebinding particularly well suited to assassination?

I think from the line about acquiring a Blade, we can assume Shallash doesn't have a Blade at all. As for the super light eyes, I equate it to an effect of massive Investiture. I can't help but wonder if some of the Stormlight is absorbed into a Radiant's sDNA over time, leading to the lighter and lighter eyes. It may not have occurred with Jasnah because her main ability she uses is Soulcasting, which gives away the Stormlight. Kaladin, however, primarily used Stormlight to enhance himself and was holing on to a LOT of it most of the time. Shallan has just started the Stormlight habit. It will be interesting to see how that plays out.

For some reason I think the secret of the Recreance is attached to the epigraph of chapter 83. To quote: I can't explain why I think these two are tied together, but whatever this Ancient of Stone is, he's been apparently holding together the world at least since the Heralds broke their Oaths. Is he Taln? If so, could the Recreance have been a massive realization by the Radiants that the Heralds broke the very first Oath themselves? They put destination before the journey, and the whole world could suffer for it. Tangent: anyone else think it odd that Jezerin is acknowledged as the leader of the Heralds, but Dalinar is a Bondsmith and is going to lead the Radiants? What, I wonder, did the Herald who inspired the Bondsmiths teach pre-Desolation?

It could be that an Honorblade's bond is more in line with a nahel bond than a dead-spren Blade bond. It would explain Szeth's ability to Surgebind when not holding the Blade.

Follow up question: how does sending a trained killer like Szeth loose on the world with an Honorblade serve any kind of useful purpose in the whole "Nah, Desolations aren't a thing, man. Whatevs" plan? So if he's right, you've pretty much guaranteed he's coming back for vengeance. Makes me wonder if being Truthless involves training with -all- the Honorblades... but where would they get the Stormlight?

I believe the quote you are thinking of is the spren betraying the Listeners for humans. As for spren forming Shardplate, it still hits that wall. Why do they need constant Stormlight, why do gemstones act so differently in each? In my mind the fact that you can even somewhat mimic Plate with half-Shards indicates that they are more closely related to fabrials than Shardblades.

To your second point: you are assuming that Surgebinders unrestricted by laws would be easy to stop. Let's assume that any Surgebinder pre-Radiants had even Szeth's level of Surgebinding... how effective were any conventional means of stopping him, again? That doesn't even touch Jasnah, or even Lift. I wouldn't doubt that Surgebinders were effectively uncontrollable until the Heralds forced organization onto them, probably post-Nohadon. In fact, Nohadon might have been the one to instigate it

So here's a better question then. If Blades and Plate are effectively the same material, why does Plate need a constant infusion of Stormlight to function whereas Blades will do their thing with no further Investiture spent? Why do gemstones allow people to mimic some aspect of the nahel bond, specifically the summoning/dismissal of a Blade, yet those same gemstones function pretty much as batteries for Plate? Two things from the same source should act more similar than Plate and Blades tend to, I think.

Correction: we can assume -some- voidspren are intelligent. The listener bond and the nahel bond are different enough that I'm not sure there's enough Cognitive flow between a Parshendi and the spren it's bonding to allow the spren to be sapient in the Physical realm. Stormspren in particular might not be intelligent at all, since they seem to represent a natural force and all intelligent spren so far represent abstract concepts.

Well, Szeth does mention that Voidbringers can hold Stormlight perfectly. Perhaps Plate was designed as both an augmentation to the KR as well as a shield against having their Stormlight taken. The original purpose of the gems could have been to fuel Surgebinding, but I'll wager it was actually just like now, to feed the Plate, allowing the Radiant to use the Plate without sacrificing his own Surgebinding.

No, but they are certainly on a dramatically different evolutionary path. I don't see large apex predators like chasmfiends, herd creatures like chulls, and smaller predators like axehounds all naturally evolving from a different phylum than the large sentient creatures. If they all have carapace and the other similarities that people have noticed, why would they have different blood?

I don't know that I agree here. Let's assume he's been on Roshar for maybe 30 years. Long enough to establish himself as a swordmaster, train Adolin around age 6, and show up at the Shattered Plains at the right time. So... 1560 or so Breaths, plus a few spares. That's probably around 5th Heightening, and we've seen Vasher with that much Breath before. Also, you're assuming that at some point he doesn't take back the Breath he gave the God Kings. Point being, it's certainly possible... I'm actually going to go 50/50 on whether he's using Breath or Stormlight. Maybe a mixture?