Beautor

Okay, I can see where you're coming from, but Stormlight must have a guiding directive. If it didn't, how would it know to fix anything that was wrong with a person prior to attaining stormlight? How would it fix Renarins eyes rather than just maintaining his vision at its current level? How would it regrow Lopins arm when he'd lost it long before he ever consumed stormlight?

Some mechanism of stormlight healing needs to be able to evaluate ideal normal and restore the body to that ideal. If this wasn't the case, then new surgebinders would start at their own personal normal and be restored to that particular point of health. We don't know where that ideal is set, or what factors are involved. I think that since every surgebinder has to be slightly broken in order to become a surgebinder, that brain chemistry may not be affected by this, but I still have serious doubts that something like seizures would not be corrected.

This will also b the last time I post in this thread since it appears that anything that is said here that even marginally appears unfavorable about Renarin results in a down vote, and I really don't see any reason to interact with people who feel they have the right to abuse the voting system because I have my own opinion.

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.

Is this really surprising? Spren apparently can choose who they want to bond with (Wyndle did), and it would be a very good idea for spren to bond with world leaders. The Kholin family is one of the most powerful groups of people in the world.

 

Even if it isn't the spren consciously choosing them, Dalinar and Gavilar's influence on their children likely has them being more honorable than most, making them more likely than most to attract a spren. I don't see any need to attribute any special qualities to the Kholin bloodline.

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.

Actually it may not be Sadeas that is the issue with winning a shardblade in a duel. Two points from some of the WoR chapters.

 

Duels for shards are not common (see Adolin' duel)

 

The "duelee" if you will, must accept the duel for shards. If I was a shardbearer and knew how good Sadeas is supposed to be no way would I duel him. Several places in the WoR pre release chapters talk about how they can get people to accept duels with Adolin for their shards

 

Also all these people with shardblades are probably pretty good too, hence the reason they have them. I remember a quote somewhere that Dalinar had given plate/blade to the king to give out to the best warrior, since that is what is best for the kingdom. Making the assumption that Sadeas is better than them just because he is really good too may be incorrect.

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.

That is an interesting idea, but I feel like that would have been mentioned in tWoK if it were true. 

 

Pretty much anything else possessing a Gemheart was pointed out as such, really just greatshells though. I would think Ryshadium would have as well. Maybe not, but this one doesn't feel right to me anyway. 

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.

 

 

2) Are there non-human races on Roshar, or non-humanoid races that are sentient?

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.

I believe that those KR who abandoned their blades at Feverstone basically killed their spren. Those spren were by and large the spren of Windrunners and Stonewardens. Sylphrena may see the blades as both executioners and corpses. She is the only spren who has thus far shown any reaction to a Shardblade.

 

An appeal from the Cryptics:

On behalf of the free society of Cryptics, I would ask that you to cease and desist lumping all spren together based on the actions of one renegade Honorspren. Sylphrena is not even a good candidate to represent her own spren type, let alone the multitudes of other spren who exist within the cognitive realm. She is a criminal and should she approach you we would advise caution. She entered the physical realm illegally and is suspected of a multitude of other crimes. The very fact that she bonded to a dangerous renegade slave who repeatedly disregarded the wishes of his superiors should be evidence enough of her poor judgement and anti-establishment type thinking.

 

Thank you for taking the time to read this. If you encounter Sylphrena, please contact us by thinking about it really really hard.

The Board of free Cryptics.

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.

I thought it was interesting that the Parshendi spy on humans using dullform, "It was a form of low intelligence, low capacity. They used it now to spy on the humans (Interlude 1)" It seems that this form must be very similar to slaveform if they are able to pass off as spies. I think that we can now safely assume that Shen is a Parshendi spy.

Maybe not, maybe by his relationship with Bridge 4 he is on the verge of discovering a new form, friendform?

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.

 

Mateform meek, for love to share,

Given to life, it brings us joy.

To find this form, one must care.

True empathy one must employ.

—From the Listener Song of Listing, 5th stanza

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.

They are called Crypples.

Odium take my soul.

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.

I also don't think the plains were literally one solid plain that was later shattered, it's just a way to describe how it looks. Apart from the name, there's no evidence to support the idea that the land could crack in such a way. On Earth, when things hit the ground they make craters, they don't make otherwise-stable plateaus.

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.

...

 

It would be nice if Mr. T would talk to Dalinar instead of sending someone to kill him. He might learn some useful information. And if the 1000 days predicted has past by the beginning of WOR then that vision won't be useful anymore.

Why would he do that? He doesn't know Dalinar is having visions, so far as I'm aware. All he knows is that Dalinar is taking his place as Highprince of War.

 

 

I agree it might be worth a shot, but the issue is that once you try to talk with people and tell them about your plans with the death whispers, your hand is played. One of Taravangian's main advantages at this point is that no one knows he's behind anything at all. Again, I'm not at all sure why he isn't attempting to do a worldwide prophecy recording contest. I hope his reasons are explained more in WoR.

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.

What if the shattered chips left over from Soulcasting are the gem chips in spheres, or at least a significant source of them?

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.

Sorry, gotta jump in here - what you said above about real-world examples of brain injury just isn't accurate. Phineas Gage, and everyone who's ever been lobotomized, or had personality changes because of surgery or strokes, etc, sustained physical damage to very specific parts of their brain. In the case of Gage, he sustained damage to the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for higher-order behavior and impulse control. The lobotomy cases are similar, and basically removed motivation from people. The people who lost short-term memory all had damage to specific parts of the temporal lobe (i forget which one, but its' well described). 

 

People who are in a "vegetative state" have damage to the entire cerebrum, and therefore have no personality or consciousness left; all they have are autonomic functions (breathing, etc) and reflexes. People who are "brain-dead" don't even have that, and require a machine to breathe for them.

 

My point is that all of these are specific physical injuries, the same way that a broken arm is different from a broken leg. Applying this to TES, if the Emperor had been "alive" in the in-world spiritual sense, then healing his body of injuries would have also healed all the "brain damage" as well. I believe that the proper way to look at this is that the resealers got there too late, and basically healed a dead body.

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.

Or, alternatively, that the resealers did not understand how to heal the brain injury or even recognize that there was a brain injury of that nature until it was too late.

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.

name_here, on 19 Nov 2013 - 12:35 PM, said:

Personally, I think what happened is that he died and then his corpse was fixed up. Physically, he was completely fine, but as an empty shell with nothing inside. Sure, the body was alive, but I don't think it really qualifies as him as far as the magical aspects are concerned.

Yes, he does successfully receive a highly personalized and intricate soulstamp, but that just means Shai managed to fast-talk reality into thinking he'd survived and recovered. She made a copy of his original soul and stuck that into his body, and the stamp took because it was plausible he could have woken up after a lengthy coma

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:

He reached down with his free hand and infused the stone circle with Light, Lashing it toward the northwest section of the sky. Lashing something to a distant point like that was possible, but imprecise. It was like trying to shoot an arrow a great distance.

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.

I think Szeth could fly (it's not like getting a sack full of spheres would be hard, given his benefactor), but likely doesn't because of how bloody unstealthy it is. It's not hard to notice a glowing streak in the sky.

 

Here, however, is some very rough math:

 

I don't know how long a Lashing can hold. Szeth used a little one to stick a guard to the ceiling, and it lasted maybe 20-30 seconds? Lashings accelerate you, which means you get faster and faster the longer you use it, making longer travel more efficient. (Or, well, it would mean that, if not for air resistance. However, I see no reason why Szeth couldn't go up into thinner atmosphere, given that Stormlight means he doesn't need to breathe and it hardens his body.)

 

Terminal velocity for a regular skydiver here on Earth is about 200 km/h, though if you pull in your arms/wear more aerodynamic clothing, things change. (This assumes 1g of force.) Roshar has about 70% of Earth's gravity, but this is countered by the fact that the atmosphere will likely be thinner. Regardless, Szeth is not limited to this terminal velocity, but the faster he goes, the more it's going to hurt his body, so I think it's a decent limit. You can reach 99% of terminal velocity in 10 seconds or so, so we can just assume Szeth can constantly move at 200 km/h and this uses up one sphere per 30 seconds. This gives us a nice number: 120 spheres per 200 km traveled. For reference, Russia is about 600 km long. A regular backpack would hold somewhere around 200 spheres assuming they're as small as I imagine them.

 

With this in mind, Szeth isn't likely to be able to fly across Roshar on one backpack worth of spheres (I don't think we know how long Roshar is, but it's likely larger than Russia, given the sheer amount of various kingdoms). However, if you consider that spheres are like 90% glass and only 10% crappy gemstone... well, if Taravangian has any gemhearts lying around, or nicer stones like Jasnah's, I think Szeth could manage to fly between a city every highstorm without issue and have enough gems left over to assassinate.

 

Kaladin is about 10x more efficient than Szeth (even more after he spoke the Second Ideal), as judged by the fact that he could hold his breath 15-30 minutes while Szeth can do it for a few minutes at most. Even if Szeth can't do it, Kaladin will be able to do it.

 

Now, if you let Szeth go up into the upper atmosphere...

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?

Funny you should mention that quote. I wanted to talk about it a while back, but couldn't find a good thread for it, and my comments didn't warrant a new topic, so I just let it sit. But now... yes, it is possible that the report is true, but it stinks a little to me. Maybe it's the way it's delivered, but it sounds too simple to me - and neither the real world, nor Brandon is usually this simple. For some odd reason I find it likely that the priests were receiving prophecies, but from a source other than the Almighty, and they knew it. So instead of admitting that they had been listening to some dark god, they tell the Sunmaker's gang that it was all a fabrication. I don't know, but they feel like martyrs to me here. It would be a very Brandon thing to do...

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 sooo funny if the parshmen have them

Right under everyone's noses...

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.

"The Thread Voidbringers are coming!"

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