Beautor

Gloom, I agree that Stormlight must have a guiding directive, and I'd guess that it's the cognitive aspect of the individual that determines what is the "fully healed" aspect. That would explain why Kaladin's slave brands have not healed. He still sees himself as a branded slave. As being someone held back and oppressed by the Lighteyes. The way I see it regarding Renarin's eyes, to me it makes perfect sense that his eyes would heal with Stormlight because he would see himself as seeing normally because he wears corrective lenses. Myself, without corrective lenses I would be almost blind, however because I wear contacts constantly I almost never think about having a vision deficit. If I were to form a fluid description of myself in my normal day it with normal vision because I always wear my lenses. I'm not sure if I have explained my theory on this well. With Lopen, from the way he talks about himself it appears to me that he still sees himself as having two arms, even if one is no longer attached. He describes his missing arm making a rude gesture towards Kaladin after being stuck to the wall the 2nd time. On the other hand something like ASD is very much a part of who you are and how you see yourself, so I can see Stormlight having no effect on that whatsoever.

Welcome to the forum and good luck on the Shardhunt.

Glad you decided to post. I lurked for a long time before I finally started chiming in too.

Welcome to the forum.

For once I completely agree with you Moogle. It's not surprising at all to see the children be affected by their parent's standards. Dalinar teaches his sons the way he thinks people should act, and because they respect him they adopt and develop similar qualities. I'm sure Gavilar and Navani did the same. Spren being attracted powerful people who fit the character criteria for a potential bond isn't a surprise at all.

I agree that it might be as simple as there not being anyone willing to accept a challenge from Sadeas, however I'd say I think there's more to it than that. I think (don't have a quote at the moment to back me up here) that there is also a social issue with a Highlord challenging or dueling someone lower than himself and from a different house than him. It could be precipitate a war between the princedoms. We may very well see this happening in WoR. I'm sure that at the very least we'll learn more about the Alethi system of duels and challenges.

While I personally don't think Ryshandium have Gemhearts, if they did it's not to hard to believe that it's unknown just because they are so rare and their interaction with the humans is extremely limited.

Brandon did insinuate in a Q/A that one could consider Ryshandium to be sentient. Sentience is usually granted by some form of investment, like the spren or seons. I'd guess that the Ryshandium are special because of investment (Cultivation might be a good source here) or because of interaction with spren. My guess is special investment by Cultivation. The Parshendi are not human, but you probably already knew that. The two races of Aimaians are not human either. There are many races of sentient spren. From there, it depends if you call something like Ryshadium sentient or not.

Love it. I also tend to agree with your belief that Syl dislikes shardblades because of what happened at Feverstone Keep, but I will reserve judgement for another couple weeks until WoR is in my hands. I'm sure we will get more clues (and more mysteries) then.

Personally I don't think Shen is a spy, although I can see it as being a distinct possibility. Looking at the last epigraph, which is talking about the Listeners and bonding it suggests that the forms need more than just the right spren. They also need the right emotion or trait. He might just be developing a spren bond/form. I am excited to see how this develops and how the Listeners (love the name) change forms.

Oh my... An up vote in hopes for the salvation of your soul.

I wonder if Shallan's betrothal will ruffle some feathers, or if the Shallarin camp will see it as an oportunity for Shallan to get closer to the Kholin family? I think most will see the betrothal as an opportunity. Personally I don't really care whether there's a romance between Shallan and whomever.

You know what on earth does leave weird plateaus surrounded by cracks, albeit on a much smaller scale? A lake bed that suddenly dries up. I really doubt the shattered plains were a lake or shardpool but it is similar.

I disagree that Taravangian doesn't know that Dalinar is having visions of some sort, or at least that something special or weird happens to Dalinar during highstorms. It's common knowledge among the Alethi warcamps that he has episodes where he raves in an unknown language or giberish, and has sprouted all kinds of rumours. Many people have suggested that Taravangian would likely have spies in the warcamps, and this is why he suddenly changes his mind and orders Szeth to murder Dalinar. From what I can see on the forum the most common belief is that Taravangian has found out that Dalinar is going to become the Highprince of War. I highly doubt that the spies would have failed to investigate and pass along any information regarding the weird behaviour of someone in whom Taravangian appears to have an interest. From the epigraphs we know that Taravangian is aware of at least one other individual who claimed to see visions or weird dreams during the highstorms.

I suspect that what Nohadon did was to refine the skills and power of surgebinding, kind of like how allomancers have done with various metals and alloys. I think it's likely similar with surgebinding and what Nohadon did with the Way of Kings. An individual may be able to form a nahel bond with a Spren and be able to surgebind to a certain extent, but is limited in his/her powers without the focus of the Ideals, similar to an allomancer using impure alloys. A metal that isn't pure, but is close is still useable by an allomancer, it just doesn't work as well, and may have side effects. I believe that Nohadon (and probably his friends) worked to find the purest ideals to allow a surgebinder to gain the maximum power, and he then wrote those ideals into the Way of Kings to act as the guidebook for the Knights Radiant.

Personally I'm with Junior and hoser on this. I will be dissappointed if Adolin ends up not being a KR, and I think it would be a waste. A lot like Gawyn from the Wheel of Time. His character made me so mad every time I read it, and he never changed throughout the whole series. I get the impression from some people's posts here that the main reason they don't want Addolin to become a surgebinder is because they want Renarin to be one so he can be better than his brother. Me, I'd love to see Adolin and Renarin working together as a team fighting in tandem like how he does with Dalinar, or even the three of them fighting together like in the Starfalls vision. Sure Adolin is unstopable against Parshendi or regular footmen, and the same in one on one duels, but I strongly suspect that we're going to see them coming up against true voidbinders and creatures that are WAY more powerful than even a full Alethi shardbearer. And the fights won't be one on one. I'd like to see all the Kholins working together to unite the people of Roshar, reform the Knights Radiant, and be ready to stand against the Everstorm.

In Chapter 36 'The Lesson' after Jasnah soulcasts the footpads she removes the cracked smokestone from her soulcaster and it states that the cracked gem will be sold to a gemsmith who will cut smaller gemstones from the salvaged pieces. This certainly could be the pieces that are used in producing spheres. I'd say that gemsmiths would also be good candidates for who produces the spheres.

I don't disagree with you that the two examples I suggested are different from the Emperor's siutation. I used them because they are quite famous and easily searchable and they show that a person can suffer an extreme brain altering injury and still live. I agree that the Emperor's situation is closer to a persistive vegitative state with basic motor function than Phineas Gage. I still maintain that Henry Molaison's situation is closer to the Emperor's. His lobotomy resulted in his complete inability to form and retain memories for more than a few minutes. Studying him was the foundation of much of our understanding of the neurobiology of brain function and memory. We studied him in almost all of my neuroscience and psychology classes. I suspect that the difference with the Emperor is that since his brain was healed (resealed) that if he had of been provided with stimuli to help him learn he would have eventually been able to relearn many things, however he would likely have been a completely different person. This is the point I was getting at. I suspect that the resealers did not understand the nuances of neuroanatomy and simply healed the brain injury to a pure unaltered form, just like they would an arm or chest injury, not realizing that this combined with the brain injury wiped the Emperor's memory clean, leaving him as a blank slate waiting for input. Either way, I'm sorry for derailing this discussion from the topic of how long it takes shardblades to appear after the shardbearer's death. Back on that topic, I just reread Kaladin's fight with the mystery shardbearer, and I'm not sure that example is very helpful to the discussion since the shardbearer was holding his shardblade when he was killed and it never dissappeared. It just slips from his fingers as he falls and slices into the ground.

I disagree with you that the emperor died, although it's just a very minor difference. It has happened many times that people receive traumatic brain injuries that severely alter memory and personality without affecting motor functions. Look at Phineas Gage. He got a railroad spike through his brain and lived. The spike entered through his cheek and exited through the top of his head. Physically he was essentially normal after his wounds healed, but his personality and memory were severely changed. This is almost exactly what happened to the emperor. Another example is Henry Molaison. He was subjected to a frontal lobotomy in an attempt to treat epilepsy. He completely lost his ability to form long term memory, and was completely stuck in the now moment. I'm not sure if that needed to be in spoiler tags, but I'll try to be safe. All that being said (sorry about the tangent) I agree that the appearance of the shardblade is tied to the separation of the spiritual soul from the physical body. I believe that a person can still remain conscious for several seconds after their heart stops beating, or stops beating properly (like a heartattack type situation). That would likely be similar to the 10 heart beats.

I don't believe that it is possible for someone outside Shardplate to draw the Stormlight from the gems inside Shardplate. Look at Szeth's fight with Gavilar. Szeth is the most experienced surgebinder we have seen as a Point of View character, and from his POV we can infer that he has experience with fighting Shardbearers before his fight with Gavilar. If he could draw Stormlight from the gems just by being near he would have done so at any point in the fight, thereby disabling the Shardplate. Instead he doesn't draw any Stormlight from the plate until after Gavilar is completely incapacitated, and even then he has to open the Shardplate first before he is able to draw the Stormlight out so he can start healing himself. If he had the ability to draw Stormlight without first opening the plate he would have done so.

I'm re-reading the TWoK right now, and I just came across a Szeth section that answers my question exactly: TWoK I-6 A Work of Art. So it appears that it is lashing between two objects, but the object could be something like a distant star or planet. The person performing the lashing does not necessarily need to see or even be aware of what the end target of the lashing is; they just need to know the desired direction. I withdraw my previous reservations about flight being something different from the Lashings shown by Szeth and I agree that it is quite probable that the flight shown by the KR is using the same lashings demonstrated by Szeth.

Not to knock your geography here, but Russia is way wider than 600km's. I suspect that the 600km you indicated is just a typo. Russia is actually around 10,000 km wide, or around 6,200 miles wide. While I don't disagree that a form of flight is theoretically possible using the lashings that Szeth has demonstrated, I personally don't think that it is the method employed by the Windrunners. I don't have any specific evidence or quotes to support my belief at this time. I do have a question though. I thought the lashing's demonstrated by Szeth had to lash two things together. IE, the stone he cut from the floor to the roof above. Am I wrong in this, and can someone point me in the direction of a quote saying that the lashings are simply directional (ie. up, down, sideways, etc) rather than between two objects or bodies?

The thing about this situation is that it is entirely possible that the Sunmaker did not believe in the Vorin priest's religion, so even if the priests did profess divine direction he would have discounted it. There's numerous examples of individuals in the the book who either discount the religion of their people directly, or at most only pay it lip-service rather that being an actual devotee. If the Sunmaker believed that the priests of the Hierocracy were wrong and faking it would make sense that he would declare that he had reviewed all their correspondence and that they had made the whole thing up. It is also quite possible that a priest, or several priests who upon being subjected to torture would recant their statements about receiving divine directions just so the torture would stop. There are examples in history of people who have changed their avowed position and signed whatever statement their torturer tells them to because they can't take the suffering anymore. It's entirely plausible to me that the Sunmaker would use lies and propaganda to justify his takeover and solidify his rule.

It would be really funny, but Eshonai's reading contradicts this. I think the mystery of the missing shardblades and shard plate will come out as we learn more about the various KR orders. I do like the theory that the blades and plate are created or grown by each surgebinder as they reach a certain level.

True that it would be quite similar to the Pern series...